Eats, Shoots & Leaves Us Cold

The Contrarian reviews Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

To begin with, this little book on punctuation has a few little punctuation errors. And they’re none too subtle.

Lynne Truss is confused about commas, both American and British, as well as about the wee distinction between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses.

But the Contrarian had a graver problem with this book: Which author is he to believe?

Is it the literal Ms. Truss? A misplaced apostrophe in a store window sends her into shock, anger, and despair, and she urges her fellow “sticklers” to deface the property.

Or is it the winking, nudging Ms. Truss? She has a life beyond commas, thank you, and she doesn’t really endorse vandalism. She’s feigning anger to make a point.

The Contrarian has read her have-it-both-ways book. He’s read Frank McCourt’s gushing preface, which reveals Frankie’s own difficulties with punctuation. The Contrarian is aware, furthermore, that the New Yorker’s reviewer suspected a hoax.

But after watching this worm for a while, the Contrarian has decided to swallow. He believes Ms. Truss #1. He thinks she really is one of Those People.

Civilization’s thin line

They march through life with their briefs in a bunch, furious at the latest outrage by the unwashed against — whatever. Table manners, the carpets, monarchy, subject-verb agreement.

Against these ruffians, Lynn Truss rises to defend punctuation marks.

She loves the little abstractions. The Contrarian judges that passing weird — but he believes her, and easily, because her book is one long anthropomorphization of the marks.

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Stolid little apostrophes with mummies and daddies

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Really — it never ends.

The bang is cheerful, the pos a brave and “stolid little chap.” Well-trained colons “waltz in together” with Policeman Semicolon. Other species play too: A comma can be a “friendly little tadpoley dot” or a darting herder that “woofs” at words.

This goo finally explodes all over the kitchen in a passage that casts periods as daddies, commas as mummies, and semicolons and other marks as children. Ghastly.

Yes, the Contrarian has known the smiling e, the clever f, the stolid B, the no-nonsense period. But that was in second grade, when he was littler and less contrarian. Nowadays the cartoon gets a bit tedious, especially at feature length.

Credit where it’s due

Still, give Lynn Truss credit where it’s due. She quotes a few gems to illustrate the use and misuse of punctuation marks, and often explains these correctly. She reports the opinions of others, some interesting and some less so. Chekhov found catharsis in an exclamation point; Gertrude Stein thought question marks “revolting.” The Contrarian thought that . . . rather odd.

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Gertrude Stein thought question marks “revolting.” The Contrarian thought that odd.

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The book provides thumbnail histories of the marks, which may be accurate. Ms. Truss also misquotes G.B. Shaw and repeatedly misstates the best-known difference between British and American English, which involves the placement of closing quotes relative to different punctuation.

To keep things lively, she issues opinions without bothering to explain, must less justify. Italics “are a confession of stylistic failure.” Did you know that? The Contrarian didn’t know that. He still doesn’t.

The author also ventures far, far afield, to explain how new technology has altered the act of reading. To illustrate, she contrasts reading in print to reading on screen — for which, she says, “your eyes remain static” while content scrolls past. No, they don’t. No, it doesn’t.

Ms. Truss also confuses reading with scanning, which are wholly different functions whether performed online or on paper.

But hey, other than that . . .

This author is angry, sir!

Sure, she’s confused about a few things — Who the hell isn’t? — but at least she’s willing to STAND UP against the ninnies who would disrespect Our Culture and Its Punctuation Rules.

At bottom, the entire enterprise seems just another way of fetishizing language. Rare book buyers do it; so did William F. Buckley, by equating vocabulary with exoticism. (Found a word you didn’t know — whee!)

The Contrarian is more charitable than you may think. He can overlook these things. He can even overlook other things, like Ms. Truss’s boast that a certain presidential twin had “raved” over the work.

But in Eats, Shoots & Leaves he encountered two deal breakers.

Deal breaker #1: The broad target

Ms. Truss’s choice of prey is shopkeepers, followed by teenage cell phone users. What sport!

Hardware merchants provide us with sharp tools and sturdy twine, not grammar lessons. That’s their offer — take it or leave it. And teenagers are an alien life form, not carbon-based. Their tongues and IM tappings are not susceptible of adult comprehension, much less influence.

While she’s at it, here’s another rich vein Ms. Truss might consider. A town near the Contrarian’s home requires that all signage include “clear English translation.” The sticklers who enforce this law (and presumably the punctuation rules that are so necessary to clarity) carry not markers but badges and guns.

Surely Lynn Truss knows that there are people in this world who live by the pen. They stake their claims not in twine or hormonal angst, but in effective use of the English language. And some of them are pompous pedants indeed, ripe for the skewer.

But they fight back. So Ms. Truss prefers to lecture truants and harried merchants. It’s nice work if you can get it.

Deal breaker #2: Like a wee mousie

Deal breaker number two takes us back to the start: those little punctuation errors.

So small are they, so very wee — even full-grown punctuation is by nature wee — that they might be excused in an advertisement for penny nails.

But in a guide to punctuation they stand tall and grim.

Please note that no cri is issued here for “punctuation vigilantes” to enter bookstores and manually correct Ms. Truss’s errors. With that crowd the Contrarian has no truck.

Instead, he has simply amended a rule. It had served well, over many decades, in this form:

12(a) For guidance on punctuation, don’t consult retailers or children.

Rule 12(a) is amended to add: or Lynn Truss.

Can Buckley say non sequitur?

Non sequitur is Latin for “it does not follow.”

If you’d like to see a beauty, from an avowed expert on logic and language, read William F. Buckley’s Feb. 4 letter to the New York Times.

Buckley accuses a book review of calling for censorship. But it never happened — Buckley made it up out of whole cloth. There is no call for censorship in Alan Wolfe’s Jan. 21 review of Dinesh D’Souza’s The Enemy at Home.

Strong Language holds no brief for any of this crowd; our point here concerns only language and logic. The exchange is public record, including Wolfe’s final paragraph that Buckley claims is “startling” and censorious. (Sadly the NYT offers a free link to one but not the other, so I cannot link to either.)

“They’re trying to suppress our right to speak!”

It’s an old trick: When opponents challenge your positions, call them censors.

Who’s high at the High?

Can an art museum have attention deficit disorder? The one in my town does. Here’s how it presents:

1. The High announces a film series called “From Royalty to Revolution,” promising to portray “the social inequities leading up to the French Revolution.” First up: Les Miserables, a story set several decades after the Revolution. (Yes, yes, SL knows there were several revolutions in France. But “the French Revolution” is the universal name for the one that opened in 1789.)
   
2. The High presents a major exhibition on Renzo Piano’s architecture. But the scale models — astonishing in both concept and detail — are explained in tiny type, mounted low. Some were literally at knee level. Not surprisingly, few visitors choose to kneel and squint.
3. In its mounting and lighting of an Andrew Wyeth painting, the High lops off the top. SL pretends to no expertise, of course, but we think it’s an important painting and an important top.

What Andrew Wyeth painted

What High Museum visitors saw

Granted, the last example doesn’t involve language. Even SL can’t write some convoluted explanation about how it does. So it’s not really justified in a blog on language, is it?

And maybe none of this matters at all. Hillside, hilltop, eighteenth century, nineteenth century — what’s the difference? It was back there somewhere.

Still, one wishes the hometown art museum — whose reason for being is to present art — would pay more attention to how it presents art.

What we have here in Atlanta is un musée confus.

To the Honolulu librarians

Way back ante-Webbum, they saved many a day.

Today you can look up pretty much anything with a few key strokes. But not so long ago, you couldn’t — and desperate writers turned to libraries.

They did this even up to the turn of the century!

Every serious researcher knew a few reference librarians. If you needed an answer quickly, these miracle workers could track it down and get it to you. They were information masters long before the Information Age. (They still are — may their tribe increase.)

But what about late at night? Like when you were pondering weak and weary over forgotten lore, and needed to ID an annoying blackbird. Or settle a bar bet.

You’d dial 1-808-555-1212 and ask long-distance information the number for the Honolulu Public Library — or for Hamilton, the legendary stacks of the University of Hawaii.

In short order, you’d reach a friendly, professional voice — a reference librarian, way out there at AT&T’s western reaches, late in the Pacific afternoon. In a few moments your quest would be over. You’d claim victory, collect your due, and call for the publican.

Of course, the Internet has not only made information more accessible — it has spread it wide and deep, in great quantities. There was plenty back then, but there wasn’t as much clutter.

Good thing. I don’t think I could ask a Honolulu reference librarian to work out a Bacon number.

When “Eat” means “Don’t eat”

Feed a cold, starve a fever. That prescription has been around a long time — and its misinterpretation has wasted a lot of chicken soup.

Because the original meaning, as Hippocrates explained 25 centuries ago, was this: “If you eat when you have a cold, you’ll catch a fever, and then you’ll have to fast.”

In other words: If you feed a cold, you’ll pay the price.

It’s like Drive fast, get a ticket. Or Skip class, serve detention. These are not encouragements to high speed or truancy, but warnings against such behaviors.

The good physician’s advice has come down all wrong.

The Qantas gripe sheet

After every flight, Qantas pilots fill out a form called a gripe sheet to report problems they encountered with the aircraft. Then ground mechanics address the problems and record their actions.

Is it a hoax? Some comments on the Qantas Gripe Sheet have been credited to mechanics at other airlines, too. But Qantas pilots and others confirm that the content is genuine — perhaps a collection of tarmac wisdom from different sources.

P = The problem logged by the pilot.
S = The mechanic’s solution.

____________________________________________________________

P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tyre.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces sharp descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That’s what they’re there for.

P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you’re right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

End Qantas Gripe Sheet
End Quantas Gripe Sheet

End Quantas Gripe Sheet<font color=”black”

Even smaller than a dot

If you track language foibles, the New York Times offers happy hunting. A recent letter makes the point, and makes it with style, that a single wordspace matters.

Ego and Superego
February 4, 2007

In his review of Peter H. Stone’s “Heist” (Jan. 14), Norman J. Ornstein submits that Jack Abramoff had “an outsize ego in a town of superegos.” I believe he means “super egos,” as the superegos (conscience) of Abramoff and his ilk are undersize, if they exist at all.

Fred Shectman
Pittsboro, N.C.

Well put.

The art of the interview I

Strong Language offers occasional pointers to writers. Here’s a series on how to make business interviews efficient and productive.

Part I: Logistics

“The kingdom was lost, and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

First get an appointment, not an interview.

Make contact immediately by voice, email, or both. Don’t seek the interview, but rather a time for the interview. If this seems obvious, wait till you reach a friendly, articulate, enthusiastic subject who wants to talk right now.

Don’t be tempted. She’ll be there next week — and the exchange will be far more productive when you’re comfortable, prepared, and free of schedule worries. Very little good business writing ever came from an interview conducted on the fly.

You might be making that first contact before you’ve even begun your research. If you jump in to an interview now, maybe you can wing it — or look foolish.

Don’t be this guy!

At the Atlanta premiere of Gone With The Wind, a reporter asked Vivien Leigh what role she had played in the film. She declined further conversation with “this ignoramus.”

Schedule the interview far enough out to accommodate your own schedule, and any prep work you’ll need to do.

In these initial calls or emails, take care to give your subject the basics — topic, scope, audience, length, and your contact information. Let her know if your client has given you relevant documents. (Why? So the subject won’t waste time preparing to over that material in the interview.) And if you can, forward a piece that’s similar to the one you’re writing.

A couple of phone calls or emails are usually enough to establish a connection. Don’t expect this to be effortless. Your contact — one hopes — is busy and fully engaged in her own organization, which is doing land-office business.

To fix a time

Professional standards require two things from your subject: a return call and a time for an interview. (Robert’s highest rule — the only motion that yields to none — is To fix a time.)

If you can’t get a time for the interview, or at least a return call or email after a few tries — down, boy. It’s time to stop. Don’t make yourself an annoyance. Report to your client or boss, log your time, and move on to other work pending a resolution.

Jimmy Olsen tailed subjects through dark streets. But this isn’t cub reporting. Your customer has decided that an employee will be interviewed, and your customer will decide how to implement that decision.

What if your foot-dragging subject is the decision-maker? Proceed in exactly the same way.

Coming: Redundant recording

A part of all we have met

Los Tres