Eats, Shoots and Leaves

i spotted this book in the library the other day and immediately grabbed it. i’d always intended to read it partly because of its interesting title and partly because there has been a lot of press coverage of this book, although having read it now i’m not sure what the fuss is all about.

The book interestingly enough – until the end of Truss’s preface, that is. A couple of pages into the introduction and i was already bored by her needlessly lengthy elaboration on how much of a stickler for punctuation she is – i’d got that by the first page of the book! I started to scan through the pages looking out for her more useful, and at times funny, explanations on the usage of various forms of punctuation.

Truss tries to be interesting and humourous but doesn’t always succeed – I found her pushing the point a bit too much and slightly long winded – so I’m not sure if this book would appeal to people who aren’t already some kind of grammar or punctuation Nazi: the very people who are least in need of this book actually.

Still, I learned a few things from this book:

1. The usage of the apostrophe with names

“Modern names ending in ‘s’ (including biblicical names, and any foreign name with a unpronounced ‘s’), the ‘s’ is required after the apostrophe:

Keats’s poems, Philippa Jones’s book"

However, the extra ‘s’ is unnecessary when it comes to ancient names, like “Archimedes’ screw” and “Achilles’ heel”. Jesus is exempt too: “Jesus’ disciples”, as well as those names that end with an “iz” sound (whatever that is): “Bridges’ score”, “Moses’ tablets”.

2. The usage of pairs of commas

I never knew that the pair of commas in the sentence below are unnecessary:

“The leading stage director, Nicholas Hytner, has been appointed to the Royal National Theatre.”

This is because “Nicholas Hytner” is a defining clause, and commas are not used for them. However, if the clause is non-defining and only serves to offer more information about the noun, commas are necessary.

3. bracket terminology

Round brackets are called brackets in British English, but Americans refer to them as parentheses; for the longest time i was wondering why what I’d been taught from a young age had suddenly become wrong – turns out it was just American English taking over the globe. However, the Americans call square brackets [ ] just brackets; those we use in maths { } are brace brackets and these things < > are angle brackets and were actually the first brackets to appear!