Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

by Lynne Truss

Gotham Books, 2003
~ Posted October 2020

Punctuation, says Lynne Truss in her bestselling book Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, is not a class issue nor is it “a way of belittling the uneducated,” as some critics have said. Punctuation, she says, is a system of printers’ marks that has aided the clarity of the written word for the past half-millennium.

Lynne Truss is an author, sportswriter, radio playwright, journalist, and wannabe painter who was taken aback at the fanfare created by her small book on punctuation. According to her website, www.lynnetruss.com, she felt it “was a book that nobody could accuse of failure, because it couldn’t possibly succeed.” In the book’s preface, Truss writes that the book is aimed at people who care about punctuation, that “tiny minority of British people” who believe punctuation has a place in our world. Her readers quickly expanded beyond this small group of punctuation lovers. Apparently, the world was ready and waiting for a book about dashes, colons, misplaced apostrophes, and pesky little commas.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves has spawned an industry: there is an illustrated edition (2008), a children’s version (2006), a workbook (2011), and, of course, an audio book. Truss wrote the book, she says, as a “rallying cry” to those whose prose is hopelessly littered with colons, exclamation marks and dashes, or, conversely, with run-on sentences that require an interpreter. Truss is done with the English-speaking world playing loosey-goosey with punctuation, and, it turns out, she is not alone. In his book, The Road to Little Dribbling (Penguin Random House/Doubleday 2015), Bill Bryson says that “… many people are not merely unacquainted with the fundamentals of punctuation, but evidently don't realize that there are fundamentals.” I assume Bryson and Truss are coffee buddies!

Truss’ book discusses what academics call ‘syntactic ambiguity’, also known as structural ambiguity. This is a new term to me, although scholarly articles abound, entitled “lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity”, “semantic syntactic ambiguity”, and my personal favourite, “syntactic ambiguity prosody,” (don’t ask!). According to my non-academic source, Wikipedia, syntactic ambiguity is when “a sentence can be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure.”

There are many books on punctuation. Many. Penguin contracted R.L. Trask to write one (The Penguin Guide to Punctuation, 1997). Amazon.ca has more than 1,000 books on the topic: illustrated books, children’s books, academic books, and specialty books devoted to commas or apostrophes. Apparently, we who speak English so carelessly have not fully grasped the basics of how to write it.

I asked friends if they had read Truss’ book, and if so, what did they think? A common response was “it was funny but didn’t finish it.” Interesting! My theory is that, as it catapulted to stardom, Eats, Shoots and Leaves was marketed as a very funny book about punctuation. Not so. Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a book about punctuation that is very funny. It is a book to teach us, written with wit and humour, but it is deadly serious about the ramifications of overusing, underusing, and misusing punctuation. Punctuation matters, Truss says, “even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.” 

 Her language is clear, her explanations sensible and understandable, and her contribution to continuing the structural quality of written English is stellar, although she is cognizant of the evolving stylistic shifts of written English. For example, she says, books by Hardy or Dickens are littered with what we consider today to be an overabundance of commas, semicolons, and colons. She has words of warning, however. Clarity and punctuation go hand in hand and one misplaced comma can cause a huge misunderstanding. Life or death huge. 

I grew up in an ex-British colony, and I learned Serious British Punctuation, which differs slightly from North American punctuation. Wimpled nuns of the Rigid Punctuation Convention taught me.  Mum was also keen on punctuation, so I didn’t have a chance. I was taught that a full stop (period) comes after quotation marks. North American convention places the period at the end of the sentence but within the marks. This didn’t matter much until I went back to school and profs continue to correct my essays using the North American convention, about which I did not know. Thanks so much, Lynne, for clearing that up for me.

I’m going to give Bill Bryson the last word, and I believe Lynne Truss would be pleased. “So,” he says in the aforementioned blogpost, “here is all I am saying about this. Stop it.”

You Better Watch Out

by Greg Malone ~ Knopf Canada

  Review: Halifax Herald March 2009

                       

‘Our memories are the bread crumbs that lead us home.

Without them, we stand bereft and alone.’

Greg Malone is a former member of CODCO. He is also a screenwriter, actor, director, activist and a one-time wannabe politician. Now he has added author to his impressive list of credits. ‘I love performing,’ he says as we drink mint tea in a busy Halifax coffee shop. ‘But there’s something very satisfying about [writing], to write something that’s just how I see things. I’ve always wanted to write.’ So he did. He wrote a book about growing up in Newfoundland. He began over ten years ago, writing down the more traumatic stories ‘for my sanity. I enjoyed it and people laughed, so I kept going.’

You Better Watch Out is a series of vignettes, snapshots of a childhood where friendships with Andy Jones, Cathy Jones and Danny Williams (who went on to become the Premier of Newfoundland) are cemented. The clarity of remembrance is striking and I asked Malone if he had embellished them at all. ‘No,’ he says. ‘They’re childhood memories. I don’t have these memories as an adult. I was a child, totally dependent and nowhere to go, which feels like life and death to an 8 year old, life and death in terms of your heart. This fascinates me, these dramas where the heart changes. It’s Jane Austen stuff, the little stuff that means so much to your whole life. And when you are 8 years old, it’s everything.’

It is the young Greg who tells these stories. He begins school but he ‘could not warm to Miss Snow. She carried a bright red stick, which she rapped our fingers with.’ There is a simplicity in the beginning stories as Malone sets the stage on St. John’s hilly, cramped streets. They are factual and descriptive. But as the young Greg settles into his narration and moves through grade school, the stories mature with him. He is able to see glimmerings of understanding in the incomprehensibility of the adults around him.

Malone does this well. He holds fast to the young boy, letting him tell it like it was, warts and all. Never does it seem to be imposed from an adult perspective and it is always infused with humour and insight, even those moments of terror that was part of growing up Catholic in Newfoundland.

Malone maintains his childhood perspective throughout, along with a fantastic sense of the absurd – even in Brother Clancey’s class. Br. Clancey is ‘six feet tall, (and) this overwrought celibate was not at his best in grade two.’ Br. Clancey has serious anger issues, and he has a profound and negative effect on Malone’s life.

But Greg was very young and the contradictions of religion and cruelty in the name of god and love are not to be challenged. He is traumatized. His understanding of the powerlessness of his situation develops, and by the time he is 9, his narrator’s voice has matured into the sophistication of a child who realizes that survival was not going to be on his terms.

An occasional PG warning would be in order for the more sensitive souls among us. Disasters. ‘Don’t worry, he’ll be fine,’ was the comment from the dentist ‘as (Gregg) went out holding his raw, bloody mouth.’ Betrayals. The Strap and Who is God horrify, taking the glory from school days when being strapped and terrorized was considered discipline. But even the harshest stories are softened by the humour of a bright and tender child who is determined to make sense of it all.

Malone’s love of St. John’s infuse these pages. His connection to Newfoundland is deep and clear and he has remained friends with many of the kids in the book, kids from early grade school. ‘It’s so rich,’ he says. ‘I’m so lucky. People from the Grade 4 class came to the launch (in St. John’s), kids from my street that I hadn’t seen in years. One of the [teaching] brothers came, friends came. It was a great laugh.’

           

When he can, in between acting and writing, Malone reads. ‘Sometimes I have to stop my life and read. Jane Austen is so fun, the way she plays with language. Dostoevsky, Margaret Lawrence. Doris Lessing sends chills down my spine. The Edwardian writers, Thackerary, they have so much passion.’

                                   

Will there be a sequel? We must hope! But now it’s time for something completely different! Malone is already writing another book, this time about Newfoundland joining Confederation. ‘I’m a history buff,’ he says enthusiastically, ‘and there was so much politicking and intrigue surrounding that period. It’s my type of history!’

‘What’s it like to win a Gemini?’ I ask as we finish our tea. Malone laughs out loud. ‘It’s a bit of fun!’ he says.

Greg Malone is a Newfoundland actor, AIDS activist and writer. He lives in St. John’s.

Great Multicultural North

by Ernesto (Ernie) Raj Peshkov-Chow

Red Publishing/Fernwood Publishing

  ~ Review: Halifax Herald, November 2010

This is a book,” says the opening lines of Great Multicultural North, “for anyone who has ever pondered what it means to be Canadian.”  Read on.  It is clear that Ernesto (Ernie) Raj Peshkov-Chow (who will henceforth be referred to as ‘Ernie’) has pondered this question long and hard.

Ernie doesn’t beat about the bush. “What is a Canadian?” he asks in Chapter 1, which has a good news/bad news answer.  Apparently the definition of Canadian continues to evolve and we haven’t yet chiseled out the final wording. The good news is that because no one really knows, we all sort of slide in under the radar and can call ourselves Canadian with impunity.

Great Multicultural North is a small, readable, informative primer about “how the Canadian circle can accommodate all those who choose to live within it.” It tackles serious questions about immigrants and immigration policy with humour and wit. It is funny and hugely entertaining, packed with interesting facts and statistics, probably drawn from the long census form!  Did you know that Canada produces more comedians that any other country?  Or that almost 20% of all Canadians were born outside the country, second only to Australia? 

Ultimately, Great Multicultural North is hopeful about the evolution of Canadians and multiculturalism.  Living together in harmony and peace is our ultimate goal, says Ernie. We all “belong to overlapping concentric circles of communities.” What we still lack is “a sense of community as a common humanity, or as a living thing, or as a part of the planet, or as an integral part of the universe. We need to expand our circle ... Canada could be the first place to make it happen.”

Ernesto (Ernie) Raj Peshkov-Chow is a multi-generational Canadian, whose favourite pets are peeves, who believes the Maple Leafs are holding back on greatness and who firmly believes in a new order of Canadian nationalism. He is also an author and a journalist.

I Love Your Laugh: Finding the Light in my Screwball Life

by Jessica Holmes

McClelland & Stewart

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, October 2010

Jessica Holmes has a ‘Laughter’ button on her website.  Who could ignore that?  After all, everyone needs a good laugh. But a click brought a surprise. Holmes did some research a while ago on the “importance of laughter, and its benefits on our health, mood, longevity, etc.”  Apparently we don’t laugh enough.  Who knew!!! We don’t even talk together enough and Holmes thinks we can do better, that “we could all benefit from a big group belly laugh.”  It’s hard to disagree with that, and following that trajectory, Holmes’s new book, I Love Your Laugh, must surely be beneficial to our health.

Holmes’s memoir recounts her life so far.  She was raised in a less than traditional household and the vastly differing beliefs of her parents - fundamentalist vs. feminist - meant there was some confusion to be sorted. Holmes regales her readers with stories and anecdotes that do more than entertain.  They cause lots of smiles and laughter. 

Holmes was the family comic from the beginning, translating events into the comedic, working hard for the funny side of things. But even a comedienne has downtime and Holmes is not afraid to write about the not so funny parts of her life experiences.  Being relentlessly funny is not easy apparently, and occasionally Holmes had to work hard to extract humor from situations.  “I couldn’t remember the last time I’d really laughed. My optimism had disappeared somewhere along the way, and I was living protectively, hanging on to anything I could, afraid of what life would take from me next.” 

But she does keep laughing and making fun of what life throws at her because this is how she views the world and according to her Laughter theory, we’re all healthier for it!

Jessica Holmes is a member of Air Farce Live (aka The Royal Canadian Air Farce) and star of The Holmes Show.  She is also a screenwriter and a mom.  This is her first book.

This Time Together

by Carol Burnett

Harmony Books

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, June 2010

It’s been a surprising thirty-two years since Carol Burnett tugged her ear for the last time, ending the enormously successful show that endeared her to millions.  Ms Burnett’s new book, This Time Together – Laughter and Reflection tells us what her audiences already knew.  Making that show was the best time ever! For the cast and crew, rehearsals and shooting days were full of belly laughs and friendship. “We’re just going to go out there, and get in the sandbox, and we’re going to play and have fun,” writes Ms Burnett.  They did just that.

Her big break came when she was cast as Princess Winifred the Woebegone in Once Upon A Mattress. The Broadway show was supposed to run six weeks and ran for fifty-two.  Then came The Carol Burnett Show and the rest, as they say, is history.

            This Time Together is a series of autobiographical sketches where people such as Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, Julie Andrews and Peggy Lee wander through the pages.  Ms Burnett is generous with her praise for the talents of those who worked with her through her career, the writers, producers, directors and a supporting cast of thousands.  The anecdotes do not often stray into her personal life, although she does share her devastation at the loss of her beloved daughter, Carrie, to cancer.

Her co-stars on The Carol Burnett Show, the late Harvey Korman, Tim Conway and Vicki Lawrence, feature prominently in her book.  She talks about the fun, the laughter and the tears.  “Unfortunately, our show has been accused of showing actors cracking up at times, breaking character. . . I dare anyone to be on camera and keep it together when Conway gets on a roll.”  Surely this was the best part! Utube is littered with sketches from the show - the legendary Dentist skit, the award winning Went With the Wind, Stinky, they’re all there, as funny as ever.

Ms Burnett closes her book with thanks and her list of ‘Gratefuls’ for what life continues to offer. Her family, her children and grandchildren, her career, her health.  We are left smiling, reminded of the laughter she brought into our lives.  For this, we too are grateful.

Carol Burnett has been an actor on Broadway, television and in the movies. She starred in the long running The Carol Burnett Show, which won twenty-five Emmy Awards.  This is her second book.

Adrian Mole, The Prostrate Years

by Sue Townsend

Penguin Canada 

  ~ Review in Halifax Herald, February 2010

Ever since the Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 and Three Quarters became a runaway success in 1982, Adrian Mole has continued to entertain his devoted followers. We have watched him grow up, get married and have children, though not necessarily in that order.  The life and times of Adrian Mole has kept us hugely entertained and Sue Townsend deserves multiple kudos for her comedic ability, especially in light of the content of her latest book which finds Adrian at an all time low.

Adrian Mole is a writer of bad, bad novels, even worse plays and a diarist extraordinaire.  Adrian Mole, The Prostrate Years finds him working in a used bookstore in Leicestershire, living in a converted pigsty which, in spite of gentrification, cannot shake its origins, and keenly aware that his marriage is less than idyllic.  His wife, Daisy, is a sophisticated city girl who hates country life and refuses to so much as purchase a pair of wellingtons.  The tantrums of his five year old daughter Gracie are no longer cute and his mother is considering an appearance on The Jeremy Kyle Show to publicly solve the mystery of his sister’s paternity.

Bad enough, but to make matters worse, Adrian’s frequent nightly visits to the bathroom are causing him enormous concern.  He suspects prostrate trouble.

Townsend’s sense of timing is perfect!  If you’re going to read this in public places, hold the book so the title is clearly visible.  It will explain stifled chuckles and smothered guffaws.

Sue Townsend was Britain’s best selling author of the 1980's for the Adrian Mole series.  She is also a well-known playwright and lives in Leicestershire, UK.