Review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. by Lynne Truss. New York: Gotham Books, 2003. ISBN 1-5924-0087-6. $17.50 hardcover
.Success has not gone to Lynn Truss’s head. In her preface to the American edition of her informative and enjoyable best-selling guide to punctuation usage, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, she is a bit amazed that a topic of interest to “sticklers” such as herself has become so popular. Punctuation usage is no stranger to me, as a teacher of English in the Learning Lab, and so I do not mind being associated with her self-described freaks and pedants. However, despite the fact that it is a best-seller in two countries, there are millions who will not read her book. While Truss is carrying on an amusing and enlightened conversation with her sticklers, she is also talking about the non-sticklers, not only those who don’t observe the rules of punctuation, but also those who break or change them.
Who are these people? Based on the examples in Eats, Shoots & Leaves, greengrocers selling “GRAPE’S” head the list of usual suspects of punctuation abusers, but it is not sufficient to single out one occupation as the chief culprit. Punctuation punishers are found everywhere. Truss admits that she gets quite worked up when she notes an error, and when referring to one who does not learn the rules for usage of the apostrophe, Truss calls him or her “thicko” (105). She uses this flippant and rude label because in her mind some rules for apostrophe usage, for example, “its” and “it’s,” are fairly straightforward and proper usage can be learned and checked by substitution. The reader can feel Truss’s livid anger at mistakes of this type; however, while she militantly berates those who misplace, omit, or demote an apostrophe, she does not usually resort to name-calling.
She does blame ignorance and indifference (2) for these errors. Ignorance is a more controversial qualifier than indifference. It carries negative connotations and can be used as an insult. It is also imprecise. Truss credits a change in instruction in British schools, beginning (when else? in the 60’s!) with a lack of knowledge about punctuation. The National Curriculum now ensures that grammar and punctuation are taught in elementary grades, but this is not guaranteed to solve the problem since curricula alone do not avert ignorance. Effort, work, time, and sweat are needed.
Truss is not a teacher; she worked as an editor and is a very gifted writer, and her book was not written for freshman composition or developmental writing students. When reading her book, I thought that most of the students I teach in the Learning Lab would fall into the great collection of non-sticklers, those who will not buy, let alone read, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. Probably few of my students are greengrocers, so their lapses in punctuation are not occupationally linked but are probably linked to ignorance and indifference.
Are developmental writers ignorant? Topics related to grammar and punctuation were probably covered in their previous schooling. Nowadays, third and fourth graders are taught about the two major uses of the apostrophe. (Working as a volunteer homework tutor in an after-school program for Camden public primary pupils, I have seen the worksheets.) However, just because the topic was taught does not mean that it was learned. A useful activity in the Learning Lab, when a student comes in with a question about punctuation, is to ask what he or she knows about the topic and to request that he or she express this knowledge verbally or in writing. Students often know something about topics related to the mechanics of writing, but they may still need to learn more.
Effort is needed to overcome ignorance, but just how much effort is expended? Often students are advised that they should spend three hours a week doing homework for each hour in class, but this estimation of time on task seems to be an urban myth. A 2002 survey from the National Survey for Student Engagement found that “Only about 14% of full-time students spent more than 25 hours a week preparing for class, the approximate number that faculty members say is needed to do well in college. More than two fifths (41%) spent 10 or fewer hours a week.” Many students in the Learning Lab admit that they do not spend much time on their homework. Either the assignment (such as two exercises from a textbook) can be completed fairly quickly, or it quickly leads to frustration, as in the case of writing an essay on a difficult reading assignment. Students may not spend much time on academic tasks, but often they spend a good amount of time on other personal tasks, such as work or child care.
For the most part, though, developmental writers are not indifferent. They come to the Learning Lab to seek assistance, and this shows that they are interested in improving their writing. Often they ask specifically about punctuation usage. All is not hopeless, and perhaps correct punctuation usage will become more widespread.
But I am not sure that the situation will improve enough to satisfy the ever fussy Truss. She writes, “Using the comma well announces that you have…confidence in your style and a proper respect for your reader, but it does not mark you out as a master of your craft” (106). Our students should have confidence in their writing and an awareness of their audience, so correct comma usage is a minimum but important outcome for their development as good writers. However, I would like to propose that correct usage of the comma marks a writer as a master, albeit a junior master, of the craft. Comma usage indicates students are aware of sentence boundaries, can construct a hierarchy of ideas, and can make the distinction between the necessary and the incidental. Expanded beyond the sentence level, these competencies mark a good writer. Using the comma well would be quite sufficient for our developmental writers.
References
Indiana University. National Survey for Student Engagement (2002) “National Survey of Student Engagement, The College Student Report” Retrieved July 8, 2004 from the World Wide Web, http://www.indiana.edu/~nsse/html/overview_2002.htm
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Maintained by Jay Howard,Sept 2004