Steve McIntyre writes: Lynn Truss‘ book on punctuation “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” received astonishing coverage.
The title of the book is based on the following joke:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons. ‘Why?’ asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. ‘Well, I’m a panda,’ he says, at the door. ‘Read the manual.’ The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
‘Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.’
Had the manual been written by Peter Gleick, the manual would have read “eats, shoots, and leaves”.
===============================================================
Read the rest of the entry at Climate Audit here
I wonder if there’s a connection between serious climate interest and lack of spelling and punctuation ability? John Coleman and Joe Bastardi, important workers on the honest side of climate, are famous for needing an editor.
It’s generally true that interest in a subject is a deeper characteristic than which side of the subject you choose. For instance, militant priests often become militant atheists and vice-versa, but militant priests/atheists never become fanatical stock-car drivers.
In the bar there were two strippers, Joe, and Adam.
In the bar there were two strippers, Joe and Adam.
A woman without her man is nothing.
A woman: Without her, man is nothing.
They use the same words in the same order, yet the 2 sentences have opposite meanings. In the written word, punctuation is everything.
I was taught in my formative years in the early 80’s to always use this so-called “Oxford Comma.” I’ve seen it becoming more common in recent years to not use it, but in my opinion using it does give greater clarity, and the comments above mine already give several examples of places where NOT using it is a bad idea.
And now you’ve reminded me of the poem called “The Chaos.” It’s about pronunciation, not punctuation, but. . . . it’s all English class, right?
I was learnt grammer back in the 50s, when the Oxford comma reigned supreme. And it stood me in good stead for writing business software.
a, b and c, d, e and f.
b and c – obvious, no ambiguity.
e and f – Hey! User! Do you mean e AND f, or do you mean e, f ? Should I flip a coin?
Failblog got this to say about Oxford coma: http://failblog.org/2012/01/28/party-fails-after-grammar-saves-stag-parties/
Comma, of course. And I see that Kasuha above already made that case.
The panda is supposed to eat shoots. And leaves. Bamboo shoots. Bamboo leaves. There should no no commas at all in the sentence, Oxford or otherwise. 🙂
Commas are greatly overused and are normally incorporated into the written word to excuse laziness. The written word should permit nothing but clarity.
To quote an example given above, “I saw cars that were red, green and blue.
How may cars did I see?”
The correct expression of what I think that the author meant is, ” I saw three cars; one was red, one was green and the other was blue”.
The usage of the comma is reasonably precise, the problem is that writers use the much-abused punctuation mark to disguise their poor sentence construction.
@Kasua
The ambiguity is also resolved by more-traditional punctuation:
In the bar there were two strippers, Joe; and Adam.
In the bar there were two strippers: Joe and Adam.
The version I remember has the panda visiting a prostitute and leaving without paying. Fill in the details for yourselves.
@Stephen Fisher Brown
“Commas are greatly overused and are normally incorporated into the written word to excuse laziness. The written word should permit nothing but clarity.”
Man! I bet you’re a real hoot at dinner parties. Do you put an apostrophe in Finnegans Wake?
Smokey says:
March 2, 2012 at 1:33 pm
I would like to thank my parents, Peter Gleick and Madonna.☺
_______
Fortunately for Peter Gleick, Madonna is no longer married to Sean Penn.☺
It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood.
~ Karl Popper
Pretty much the same for writing.
. . .
eg, Steven Brown: “I saw cars that were red, green and blue. How may cars did I see?”
Maybe two?
@ur momisugly Stephen Brown March 2, 2012 at 4:00 pm
I could easily interpret that to be two classes of cars, one red and the other green and blue. “Properly punctuated”*, there would be no ambiguity. “I saw cars that were red, green, and blue.
How may cars did I see?” In this example there are three classes of cars.
cheers,
gary
* Strunk & White’s Elements of Style rule #2
I’m sure it’s the kiwi that eats roots shoots and leaves.
Reminds me of a common offense on this blog, even in lead posts—a certain WE comes to mind—namely, the use of a comma to separate what are really run-on sentences; it’s almost as though the semicolon didn’t exist.
/Mr Lynn
Shouldn’t that be “Pandamonium”?
Gary Turner,
“I saw cars that were red, green, and blue.” There might be two cars [since ‘cars’ is plural]. They could each be red, green, and blue.
Even Oxford isn’t sure when to use the Oxford Comma:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/oxford-comma-dropped-by-university-of-oxford_b33357
As others will have learned, I am of the opinion that ‘style’ is something for individual choice; so ALL style guides are exactly that: A guide, for those unable to decide for themselves…
In German, Nouns are Capitalized (but not ALL of them – using the emphatic – some say shouting – All Caps) and as English is derived from German, one can reasonably reach back to our common past and choose the capitalization level of their wishes… Then we have the fact that modern English is shared among many nations and peoples; so ought we disqualify them from adding their unique flavor to the mix? Is “Shall I knock you up in the morning?” not “allowed” as folks in America think it is asking “Do you want me to make you pregnant tomorrow morning?” while folks from more UK influenced lands, such as New Zealand where I was greeted at hotel check-in with that phrase, tend to hear it as “Ought I give you a wake up call in the morning?”
The simple fact is that ALL natural languages have natural ambiguity. Legal Speak more so than most 😉 (Oh, and is the use of the smiley ” 😉 ” also forbidden as it was not in my Style Guide in high school?)
And therein lies the rub. Languages change over time. ALL Style guides are, by definition, out of date. At the moment the last line is written, some neologism has become accepted. Thy truth be nay mine, an ken me not yer ire.
So all the Style Police are advised to transition to one of the artificial languages where all is defined, constant, and subject to Authoritarian Control. Otherwise you will simply frustrated be for the rest of your days, largely from people like me, who are quite happy to make style our own; and use it to good effect.
FWIW, after learning a half dozen natural languages, getting OK at one synthetic language, and some dozen+ computer languages (including creating a preprocessor so that I could write in my own custom way and still run in another computer language): I feel I have some right to pick up particularly good bits from wherever I might find them and use them as I will; including the Polish habit of a sentence several paragraphs long, so long as it holds my point and makes it entire.
Or ought I revert to writing in Olde Anglish as she were so lang syne? It is, after all, quite proper…
Oh, I likely ought to add an example from my linguistics class, oh so long ago:
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Fix that with punctuation…
And and the cars point: It’s easy to disambiguate, if you wish:
I saw cars of three solid colors: red, blue and green
I saw cars of three solid colors: red, blue, and green
Same meaning.
I saw two tone cars in: red and blue with green.
I saw two tone cars in: red and green, or blue and green
I saw two tone cars in: red or blue, with green
Same meaning. Overloading punctuation is just lazy. Add some words to disambiguate (or remove them to become a good politician…)
FWIW, those natural ambiguities in natural languages are unambiguously removed in computer languages. Having learned a great number of them; I can assure you no living human would want to speak in a language that precise and unforgiving… Even fewer would want to listen them such a person. I know…
I get it … a balance is required, sort of a ‘punctuated equilibrium’, as it were, or, not …
Her book included a letter punctuated two different ways, illustrating the importance of punctuation.
Dear John:
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy–will you let me be yours?
Jane
and
Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Jane
^_^
Well, as an illustration of the fundamental ambiguity of natural languages, the set of ‘reasonable interpretations’ ranges from: 2 to infinity
It could be 2: One red, one blue and green. It could be three: One red, one green, one blue.
It could be 4: two red, two green and blue (or more precisely, but violating the style guides: Two red, two “blue and green”. ( I frequently use non-standard parenthesis and quotes to remove ambiguity – so is that better or worse? (Answer is “yes” 😉 ) ).
It could be an infinite number: Some large but unknown number that were red, and another large and nearly infinite number that may be either Blue and Green; or some combination of blue cars and green cars; or all of the above…
Ambiguous speech is not fixed by punctuation rules; though they may test the degree of indoctrination of the writer and reader and the conformity of their respective camps…
That’s an old Aussie joke. Our version is a wombat who eats roots, shoots and leaves. (Is “root” US slang ?)
I’m with E.M. Smith. A style should not be rigidly adhered to, but varied with appropriate time and place.
If you always write totally precisely, as advised by Stephen Brown, you will usually be understood. Unfortunately what they will understand in general is that you are a pompous fool who doesn’t know the correct register.
The worst is to follow out of date (and frankly incorrect) advice from “style” manuals, such as Strunk and White. No good writer writes like that. It will overburden you with lots of stupid rules (avoiding the passive, go “which” hunting, etc) and not make you any better as a writer.