Book Review: Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

Punctuated with hilarious examples, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is a quirky and witty book about punctuation. The book illustrates how meaning and punctuation are so closely related. It also mentions how a disorderly punctuation can pave havoc for a writer, from “satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes” to “peppering a paragraph with commas”. The book brings into view that people who care about punctuation are the best kind of people. The author Lynne Truss calls these people as the “sticklers” or the “7th sense people”. She writes,

Proper punctuation is both the sign and cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face, is unimaginable.

In this review, I share some of the pointers I marked from reading the book. So, let’s get started!

Analogies for punctuation
o Punctuation is like stitching – it is the basting that holds the fabric of language in shape
o Punctuation marks are traffic signals of language – they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop
o Full stop and comma as invisible servants in fairy tales – the ones who bring glasses of water abd pillows, not storms of weather or love
o Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling
o Punctuation directs us how to read, in the way musical notation directs a musician how to play
Apostrophe
o The word in Greek means “turning away”, and hence ”omission” or “elision”.
o In Shakespeare’s time, an apostrophe indicated omitted letters
o It indicates a possessive in a singular noun – the boy’s hat
o When possessor is plural but doesn’t end with “s”, the apostrophe similarly precedes the “s”. Ex: The children’s toys
o But when the possessor is regular plural, the apostrophe follows the “s”. Ex: The buses’ signs.
o It indicates time or quantity – in one week’s time – two weeks’ notice – four yards’ worth
o It indicates omission of figures in dates – the summer of ‘68
o It indicates the omission of letters. Ex: She’d’ve had a box o’ red colour I s’pose.
o It indicates the omission of letters in it’s (it is, or it has)
o It indicates the plurals of letters. Ex: How many R’s are in winter?
o It indicates plurals of words. Ex: What are the do’s and don’t’s?, What are the but’s and and’s?
Comma
A cat has claws at the ends of its paws. A comma’s a pause at the end of a clause.
o The word in Greek means “a piece cut off”
o Punctuation marks are traditionally either “separators” or “terminators” – the function of comma is as a separator
o Is used for dividing items in a list – but are not required before the last ‘and’ – such a comma is called Oxford comma – Ex: The flag is orange, white and green
o In a list of adjectives, comma is used where an ‘and’ would be appropriate, where the modifying words are modifying the same thing to the same degree – Ex: It was a dark, stormy night, He was a tall, bearded man. But not in “It was an endangered white rhino.” Here adjectives not intended as list
o Used for joining, when two complete sentences are joined together using conjunctions such as and, but, while, yet etc.
o Used for filling gaps – Ex: Anne had dark hair; Sally, fair.
o Used before direct speech – The Queen said, “It’s my birthday!”
o Used for setting off interjections – Stop, or i’ll scream.
o Commas in pairs – John Keats, who wrote a poem, is liked by people.
o The people in the queue who managed to get tickets were very satisfied. - The people in the queue, who managed to get tickets, were very satisfied.
o Using a comma well announces that you have an ear for sense, sound and rhythm.
Colon & Semicolon
o Expectation is what these stops are all about; expectation and elastic energy. Like internal springs, they propel you forward in a sentence towards more information, and the essential difference between them is that while the semicolon lightly propels you in any direction related to the foregoing (Surprise!), the colon nudges you along lines already subtly laid down.
o HW fowler said that the colon “delivers the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words”
o Colons introduce the part of a sentence that exemplifies, restates, elaborates, undermines, explains or balances the preceding part. – They start lists especially the lists with semicolons – they separate dramatic character from dialogue – they also start off long quotatons and introduce examples
o The main place for putting a semicolon is between two related sentences where there is no conjunction such as “and” or “but”, and where a comma would be ungrammatical
o The dash is less formal than the semicolon; it enhances the conversational tone.
o Whereas a semicolon suggests a connection between two halves of a sentence, a dash is about when the connection is a lot less direct.
o Linking words such as “however”, “nevertheless”, “also”, “consequently” and “hence” require a semicolon.
Italics
o Titles of books, newspapers, albums, films
o Emphasis of certain words
o Foreign words and phrases
o Examples when writing about language
Quotations
• Double quotations for speech and single quotations for quotation within quotation
• When a piece of dialogue is attributed at its end, conclude it with a comma inside inverted commas. Ex: “The flag was orange, white and green,” he said.
• When a dialogue is attributed at the start, conclude with a full stop inside inverted commas. Ex: He said, “the flag was orange, white and green.”
• When a dialogue stands on its own, the full stop comes inside inverted commas. Ex: “The flag was orange, white and green.”
• When only a fragment of speech is being quoted, put punctuation outside the inverted commas. Ex: He was saying that the flag was “orange, white and green” in colour.
• When the quotation is a question mark or exclamation, the terminal marks come inside the inverted commas. Ex: “Was the flag orange, white and green in colour?”
Brackets
• Round brackets – to add information, to clarify, to explain, to illustrate – Tom Jones (1790) was considered a good book.
o For authorial asides – he was blamed for earthquakes (isn’t that interesting?)
• Square brackets
o Editor’s way of clarifying the meaning of a direct quote without actually changing any of the words – i’ve read that book [Tom Jones] quite a couple of times.
ELLIPSIS
• The ellipsis is the black hole of the punctuation universe
o Used to indicate the words missing and to trail off in an intriguing manner.
Hyphens
o Many words require hyphens to avoid ambiguity: words such as co—respondent, re-formed, re-mark.
o Used when spelling out numbers such as thirty-two, forty-three
o Used when linking nouns with nouns or adjectives with adjectives.
o Used for a linguistic condition called letter-collision – ex: shelllike – shell-like
o Hesitation and stammering are indicated by hyphens – ex – w-ww—www-atering

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