*EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES

Pause and Effect
When I was teaching at Winchester College twenty years ago, one of my colleagues ran what he called 'The Society for the Protection of Spoken English'. Boys who heard a don utter a solecism could report the instance to the Society, and the matter would be taken up with the don concerned. One morning I was in the Common Room when the Head of Classics was approached and accused of a grammatical lapse. His incredulous, indeed indignant, response was: 'I can't have said that!' Lynne Truss would have enjoyed the episode.

English readers may be aware that this book was a runaway success, to the surprise and delight of both author and publisher. When one reads it, one soon discovers why. Back in the 1980s I enjoyed teaching Wykehamists The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers, in some ways a forerunner to this book. In it were samples of execrable or impenetrable prose, and not a few instances of the effects of misplaced or missing punctuation: 'I have discussed the question of stocking the proposed poultry plant with my colleagues'.

The author begins her foray with the dreaded apostrophe 's' as in the mistaken plurals 'book's' and 'CD's'. It gets worse and more complex: 'ladie's hairdresser' 'mens coat's', and even, from an Abbey National advert, 'Make our customer's live's easier'. Sometimes the apostrophe is missing as in 'New members welcome drink' (doubtless true, she adds). She comments that the reason to stand up for punctuation 'is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning'. Quite right. If this sounds too pernickety for your taste, then you should refer to Kingsley Amis's distinction between berks and wankers: berks are the outrageously slipshod and wankers 'those who are [in our view] abhorrently over-precise'. It is commonplace to observe these days that text messages and the internet have made us more casual and that the differences between written and spoken word have become blurred.

Truss goes on to consider the full range of punctuation - commas, semi-colons and colons, dashes, full stops and question marks. It is interesting to learn that the nature of punctuation changed with the advent of printing, which made a standard system of punctuation imperative. For the previous 1,500 years the function was to guide actors and readers-aloud on the relative emphasis required. She gives examples and some basic guidance about correct and incorrect usage, although it is doubtful that those who most need advice will in fact read the book. For me, as Truss points out, punctuation is an expression of clear thinking, and its lack or misuse obscures the meaning. These days there are fewer writers like Isaiah Berlin, Gibbon or Lord Macaulay who write long sentences of several lines; and there are more people who put in extra commas where they do not belong. We can all benefit from a refresher course in punctuation, and this book is a highly entertaining way of doing so. I end with one of her examples in case you don't think punctuation matters. Consider the difference between:
'The people in the queue who managed to get tickets were very satisfied'.
and 'The people in the queue, who managed to get tickets, were very satisfied'.