David Crystal is a former colleague of Lynne Truss of Eats, Shoots and Leaves fame and is promoting his own work on the subject using a hatchet job on Truss to do so.
As someone who likes to be careful about use of language, I enjoyed Ms Truss’ book immensely. It explains the rules of punctuation simply and with gentle humour; pointing out how poor use can lead to hilarious or embarrassing misunderstanding. Punctuation is a road-map through the text, telling the reader when to pause and highlighting meaning without impeding the eye’s progress. Eats, Shoots and Leaves is a good book and well worth reading if you aren’t sure – and well worth reading if you are; you might just be in for a surprise or two.
David Crystal, however; apart from being a buffoon;
‘I made the stupidest remark of my life. “I wouldn’t bother. Books on punctuation never sell!”’
Disagrees. He accuses Truss of being a fundamentalist and of exercising zero tolerance.
Stand back for a war of words – and of commas, apostrophes and split infinitives. One of Britain’s leading language experts has attacked Lynne Truss’s bestseller Eats, Shoots and Leaves for its ‘misconceived’ and ‘deeply unnerving’ zero tolerance approach to punctuation.
David Crystal, a former colleague of Truss who once advised her that a book about punctuation would never sell, condemns the author for joining the ranks of ‘linguistic fundamentalists’. He also criticises John Humphrys, the Radio 4 Today presenter, over his book championing the rules of grammar.
Quite apart from his hyperbolic use of language – doubtless intended to promote his own volume designed to ride on the back of Truss’ work – he is being an arse. The written word lacks the nuance expressed in the spoken variety. There is no tone of voice, no body language to distinguish between a serious statement and sarcasm or humour. It is because the written word lacks these things (and because we rely so heavily upon them in communication) that punctuation and grammar rules exist. Of course we should be flexible and allow language to develop. Nothing in Truss’ book contradicts this. However, we do need commonly agreed means of conveying nuance, pauses and difference in meaning. Without them, misunderstanding will follow. Anyone who has rattled off an email and received an acid response will realise how true this is. So, too, those almost comic flame wars on Internet fora where a simple misunderstanding develops into a full scale assault involving the verbal equivalent of intercontinental ballistic missiles. If only people were educated properly in the use of the comma, the apostrophe, the difference between, for example, their, there and they’re (or its and it’s), reading much of this stuff would be not only that much less irritating, but easier to follow.
In attacking Truss, Crystal digs himself in using a JCB:
Describing the approach as ‘misconceived’, he adds: ‘Her book is humorous, clever, clear, pretty accurate, well crafted, and deeply unnerving. Zero tolerance. She uses metaphors of vigilantes, balaclavas, militant wing, criminal damage. It’s a joke, of course. Yes, it has to be a joke. But it’s a funny sort of joke.
David, dear boy, that is the point of humour; it is intended to be larger than life and it is clear from the (well punctuated) text that this is nothing more than humour applied with a light touch to illustrate a point. Indeed, the balaclavad grammar pedants joke was a piece of self parody. If you don’t get it, that’s your problem, mate. In attacking Truss, Crystal makes himself look a humourless fool.
‘Zero tolerance does not allow for flexibility. It is prescriptivism taken to extremes. It suggests that language is in a state where all the rules are established with 100 per cent certainty. The suggestion is false. We do not know what all the rules of punctuation are. And no rule of punctuation is followed by all of the people all of the time.’
And nothing in her book suggests that Truss is doing anything of the sort.
Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Wales, cites the classic example of the ‘greengrocer’s apostrophe’ – when mistakes such as ‘apple’s’ or ‘potato’s’ occur. Quoting a passage from Truss’s book, he then writes: ‘It’s humorous, once again, but lurking beneath the surface there’s an 18th-century “us vs them” attitude here which I find unpalatable.’
Bollocks. It does nothing of the sort. Crystal is projecting his own narrow minded prejudices onto someone else’s writing. Such behaviour is both tedious and spiteful. The apostrophe changes the meaning of the word – it becomes a possessive rather than a plural. When passing greengrocers and seeing this, I ask myself; “the apple’s what?” I just can’t help myself. I don’t do anything about it though and neither does Lynne Truss, who uses gentle humour in her example. In this circumstance, no great harm is being done, but Crystal is being disingenuous. If you don’t understand the use of punctuation, sooner or later you will cause misunderstanding. Truss uses a simple, regularly used example to illustrate her point.
I was fortunate. While state educated, I was of that generation that was taught grammar and punctuation at school, so understand when to use an apostrophe and when to leave it out. I do so almost instictively. Yet reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I learned a thing or two and that’s never a bad thing. Indeed, the very title uses misunderstanding to make the book’s point. If you are unfortunate enough to belong to the generation that went through the state education system without learning punctuation and grammar; thereby hampering your ability to communicate effectively in your own language and to learn other peoples’ languages, then Truss’ book is an excellent introduction to the rules and why we have them.
I can’t comment on Crystal’s book because I haven’t read it. Given that he is seeking to promote it by trashing someone else’s work, I’m disinclined to do so.