Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Eats, Shoots and Leaves was the Christmas seller last month, with copies flying off the shelves and the book having to go into emergency reprint.

However I am not impressed. Why? Because the book is about pedantic punctuation. Yes, that's right, from the comma to the semi-colon, the book details the history and 'correct' usage of these small typological marks. It's not this that I object to (though it is a fairly dull subject), but the pedantic, condescending way in which it's tackled.

Much of the book is simply taking the piss out of Grocers and other 'culprits' of bad mis-punctuation (such as the dictionary which says about pandas: 'eats, shoots and leaves'). There's actually a great quote in the book where a grocer is quoted as telling someone who pointed out one of their mistakes to 'piss off and get a life'. My sympathies.

The real problem with books like these is that the issue of punctuation is, like spelling, purely an issue related to writing. Unlike speech, the basic foundation of language, writing is a modern invention which needs to be consciously learnt. Usually this takes place in schools, but unfortunately, a lot of schools suffer from very low standards, and so many people did not get the education which others received. Learning the rules of the apostrophe isn't complicated (you could explain it on one page), and anyone can learn it pretty quickly if taught and given the chance to practise. But if it isn't learnt, then it's natural to make mistakes as there's no difference in sound between its and it's or dogs and dog's, the apostrophe is effectively a visual code.

So people who moan at others who make mistakes with the apostrophe are essentially just making fun of people who didn't get such a good education as them, which hardly seems respectable. Writing a snivelling book about it isn't big or clever. Though it might make you lots of money...