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”.
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Read the rest of the entry at Climate Audit here
Mr. Lynn: I’ve got the audio CD. Very funny and interesting and, oddly, replay it sometimes!!!
Aussies eh? Loved that skit in the UK where a guy’s interviewing an actor impersonating Russel Crowe shortly after the real Russel appeared in Maximus. He answers in that deep voice to the following question: Were you ever in a fight at school when you were younger?
“Oh yea. I got in this huge fight once during lunch break; lasted about an hour and we went round and round and round. It was brutal and i’ll tell you what: that Koala will never look at me like that again!”
Aye, but there is some virtue in standards, which help to define care and elegance in writing. Language is always changing, and so standards must be pulled along, if reluctantly. In the interim, though, the discerning ear can tell what is well-wrought, and what is not. Most speech—and fair to say, in the Internet age, most writing—is ephemeral. But some will still aspire to what E. B. White called “the odor of permanence.” How will we recognize it, if not for standards? What is more potent: the helter-skelter of indiscipline and careless babble, or the well-turned phrase that surprises us by breaking the rules? And how shall we know it, if there are no rules to be broken?
/Mr Lynn
I have a much simpler theory about commas and lists.
When I went to school in England, I was taught to omit the comma preceding the “and”.
In the USA, my kids are told by their teachers to include the comma.
It’s a simple English .v. American English thing
It took me some years to make the conversion. Fortunately, my transition was swifter when it came to the matter of driving on the wrong side of the road 😉
Two days of commas, first at CA and now at WUWT; I’m ready for “:”, and “;”!Short deliberate pauses and longer pauses before lists…
Always fun here with the smart and very fun characters that frequent these blogs.
Come to think of it, people with a great sense of humour(Canadian spelling), make for better conversations!
From Stephen Brown on March 2, 2012 at 4:00 pm:
I would be at a loss, since, as I have been taught and taught myself, I would view the logical construction to say there are cars of type “red” that are green and blue.
And besides, since there is no indication of only one car of each color being seen, there could have been, say, two blue cars and the sentence could have had the same construction, no count can be inferred.
As to style, such as mine is, I use punctuation to make my written words read like my spoken words sound. And as I speak I pause, gesticulate, or… whatever, to break up the flow of words, to allow better understanding, by providing moments for reflecting on and digesting the previous words, and I craft my writing thusly. Indeed, the pattern of the flow may contain as much or more content and meaning, as the words themselves.
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Edgar said on March 2, 2012 at 4:05 pm:
That first line is supposed to work? The speaker is addressing Joe, and… saying there were two strippers and Adam in the bar? It seems clumsy in construction. If it was me, and in context that would be what should be said, I would have used a comma instead of the semicolon.
i think therefore i yam
Mooloo says:
March 2, 2012 at 6:43 pm
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.
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Amen to that! I learned to go ‘which hunting” in grade school, but I like ‘whiches’ as I prefer English writing conventions. For many years, though, I felt vaguely delinquent using the word instead of “that”, thanks to early indoctrination.
I was going to recommend Bill Bryson’s book on the development of English, The Mother Tongue, as a really enjoyable read; I still do recommend it (strongly). But in looking up the title at Amazon.com I note that there are a host of 1 star reviews by pedants and those who find his information less than factual, for example, when he describes the meaning of foreign words or other language conventions. The vagaries of English seem be as controversial as CAGW!
I thinks, therfore I yams wat I yams. Yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk!
That’s how an Aussie gets the nickname “Wombat”
When CAGW is but a shameful footnote to history, WUWT? will still have a role to play in the world with its broad spread of people who comment here, and our host’s eye for a story across the whole spectrum of society.
Congratulations, Anthony; and thanks.
Way back in the 50’s we were taught that commas indicated a pause in a natural speech pattern, therefore “eats shoots and leaves” describes an eating habit and “eats, shoots, and leaves” indicates three separate actions.
From Webster’s New World Guide to Punctuation:
Jones where Smith had had had had had had had had had had had the examiners approval.
Jones, where Smith had had “had,” had had “had had.” “Had had” had had the examiner’s approval.
E.M.Smith says: “I saw two tone cars in: red and blue with green.”
Er, don’t you mean: “I saw two-tone cars in: red and blue with green.”?
No, one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
This, (I assume), presumes that the comma, brackets obsessed, Gleick, is able to punctuate.
Which he is not.
He has the typical hippie attitude towards the consensus structure of language.
What a dolt.
Smokey says:
March 2, 2012 at 4:26 pm
eg, Steven Brown: “I saw cars that were red, green and blue. How may cars did I see?”
Maybe two?
Smokey gets it. The point is that language, be it written or spoken, is a two-way thing. It requires that both parties understand the language used. It requires thought of both parties. That is (sadly) a rare commodity these days.
A Texan visiting Cambridge, Mass. asks a preppy, “Hey bud, can you tell me where Harvard Yard is at?”
The young preppy replies, “I’m sorry, but I do not respond to questions ending in a preposition.”
The Texan says, “Ok, can you tell me where Harvard Yard is at, a**hole?”
Smokey has it right way back here:
Smokey says:
March 2, 2012 at 1:33 pm
One ALWAYS adds an Oxford comma in order to separate the points one is making…
…climate websites such as Watts Up With That, Real Climate, and Climate Audit.
Jeez, I’m sorry but I lost count of the number of people who somehow believe this joke has anything remotely to do with the “Oxford comma” situation. At least with the Oxford comma, there’s a debate on whether or not a comma is required. Meh! Who cares?
But in this case we have a comma being inserted between the transient verb and the object of that verb (“shoots”). Sure, the joke works, and I like it, but Oxford commas don’t even enter into it.
FInally though, the closing line makes no sense:
Had the manual been written by Peter Gleick, the manual would have read “eats, shoots, and leaves”.
In the joke the manual does already say exactly that – so the last sentence should really have said something like: “The manual was written by Peter Gleick.”
Re my last comment:
D’uh I’m so stupid! Sorry – I went back and re-read it. *blushes*
The ‘opposing benches’ layout of the British Parliamentary system encourages verbal dexterity to a far higher degree than the ‘semi-circular floor’ structure of most modern legislatures.
I am reminded of R.B. Sherridan’s response to a rival, on being required to apologise by the Speaker:
“Mr Speaker, I said the honourable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honourable member may place the punctuation where he pleases.”
Then, of course, there is always Disraeli responding to the order to withdraw his declaration that half of the cabinet were asses. “Mr. Speaker, I withdraw. Half the cabinet are not asses.” ….
Why concern yourself with commas
when you can switch off the whole speech?
Which meets Anthony’s criteria (Commentary on puzzling things in life, …) and is a nice fit with this topic. Science, punctuation, speech…
Or am I stretching it?
Oxford comma? I was born, raised and educated in Oxford. According to Mr Lee, who taught me punctuation at the City of Oxford High School for Boys back in ’62, it should be… “Eats roots, shoots and leaves”. My puctuation has deteriorated since then, but is that wrong?
It’s called the Oxford Comma and the book (Eats, Shoots and Leaves) does discuss it. I fear I have (possibly unfortunately) a character trait in common with. Gleik. The book gets it half wrong, by the way, in being utterly indifferent to the use of the Oxford Comma. In much casual writing it is easy to understand sentences correctly when it is not used. But in technical writing sentences are often very confusing and possibly ambiguous without it. Sentences structures like:
… A and B, C, and D and E…
become completely confusing without the Oxford Comma. The comma (Oxford or not) to separate items in lists. So another particularly confusing circumstance is when sentence structures that compare or contrast two lists one or both of which contain 3 or more items get very confusing and/or ambiguous very fast.
It’s been some years since I last checked, but I believe the ACS style guide is ambiguous about use of the Oxford Comma and the APS style guide says to use it.
I have had discussions with science authots on this and they readily admit that they completely understand that the comma is necessary in some cases but advocate only using it in cases that require it. The problem with that, well, two problems, are that it advocates two rules for the same case which therefore require yet a third rule to distinguish cases or it teaches the reader to assume that the inadvertent absense off a necessary comma MUST mean that the author explicitly wanted to communicate the meaning inferred by the comma’s absence.
In short. It’s a construction that is not univeral among but strongly limited to technical writers, so yes this likely is Gleik’s handywork.