The above quote is culled from something Russell Baker wrote on punctuation. It follows an even better paragraph:
"When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly—with body language. Your listener hears commas, dashed, question marks. exclamation points, quotation marks s you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow."
Mr. Baker proceeds to not necessarily lay out rules, but rather solid suggestions—advice. He covers the most misused grammatical notation, the comma, and proceeds to include semicolons, dashes and parentheses, quotation marks, colon, and apostrophes.
Only the comma gets the full-Monty treatment, 11 bullet points. The other marks gets a surprisingly short narrative on their usage. And for the apostrophe, perhaps the most misused and misunderstood of all the marks, there are only four sentences of advice and examples to guide you through the shoals.
Given Mr. Baker's brevity with so confounding a subject as punctuation, you have to be amazed that there are people who have written books on the subject. But when you write about punctuation, it is easy to want to write about grammar. It is two subjects. It's like what the comedian Alan King once said about love and marriage: if you want to buy a book on the subject, you need to buy two books.
So consider the achievement of Benjamin Dreyer, who has just published 'Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style.' And as if that's enough on the front cover by which to judge a book, consider the part where you get Mr. Dreyer's current job title: 'Copy Chief Random House.' I'm not sure I've ever seen someone's job description on the cover to help sell a book.
Pay attention, and you'll pick up the misplaced tittle and apostrophe that go with the title. Lynne Truss's cover 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' cover had a built in faux pas for those who were paying attention.
It is a substantial, no nonsense book that is sure to wind up as required classroom reading at several levels. It has already registered on Best Seller lists, depending on whose list you consult, and what category you're dealing with. But face it, it is a hit book on grammar and punctuation. The least likely subject to generate a best seller. It is now in its 5th printing.
So, how do you become the Copy Chief of Random House and get your employer to publish your book? Well, you take a chance and tell the people who are offering a job at St. Martin's Press as a freelance proofreader, that yes, you know all those symbols because you have a ninth edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary.
This not quite as daring as telling the hospital administrator that yes you can do hand surgery because you read the book, but there is an element of a catch-me-if-you-can daring to the claim. But really, what the hell, what's the worse they can do to you? It's not like lying to the mob.
Up the ladder Mr. Dreyer rose, and of course on the way he acquired stories. Lots of stories, and lots of opinions on how things should be.
Oxford comma anyone? Where'd everyone go? I remember reading James Thurber's 'My Years with Ross' when I was in high school. And I remember the stories about the arguments he and Harold Ross, the publisher of The New Yorker had over the use of the comma and the word and in a series. Apparently they were pretty heated affairs.
Mr Dreyer doesn't shirk in his advice. The best advice I ever read was to take a stance and live with it. I let the sound of the words in my head help guide me in punctuation. (Mr. Dreyer believes in the Oxford comma. "Only godless savages eschew the series comma.")
I read a recent obituary of the writer Rosamunde Pilcher who has just passed away at 94. As in any good obituary, there is an anecdote at the end. This one goes that Rosamunde's daughter remembers when she was small and a friend was over, the friend commented, "look, your mummy's (British, you know) lips are moving."
The daughter was not one to be worried, and allayed her friend's fears that perhaps mummy was crackers by simply telling her: "Don't be stupid. She's writing."
I hear my writing in my head. I may not move my lips like Rosamunde did, but I do hear it being spoken. As such, I try and punctuate accordingly. A comma to me is a stage note to the actor to pause for a tenth of a second or so, before moving on to the next word. Take the slightest of breaths. If you can hear the pause, then you've got the comma in the right place. If you're out of breath, then you need a comma.
Pretty hard to try and introduce a writing rule by way of a breathing exercise, but that's the way I hear it working. I tend to use the Oxford comma. When I remember.
Other punctuation marks are discussed. Anyone for semicolons? My favorite semicolon story is when Jimmy Breslin was telling the TV media about the Son of Sam letters he was receiving in 1977. Son of Sam, for those who might not know the story, was the name an individual gave himself as he was terrorizing NYC with killings that were on a serial killer frequency. (He was caught and is still in prison.)
He admired Jimmy's writing and wrote him handwritten letters with sharply slanted block letters. Jimmy proclaimed the man had to be highly educated because he was using semicolons in all the right places. It was the best use of semicolons he had ever seen.
Follow the advice on how to use them. Just don't kill anyone because you feel you've got it down pat.
Wives tales are punctured, so it is possible to feel good abut yourself for doing things the way you've been doing them. Yes, start a sentence with and if you want; end a sentence with a proposition if you have to. And if you like, split that infinitive. You might no longer need therapy.
Need help with affect/effect? It's here. I once had an audit manager who tried to set us straight with that one so she didn't have to cringe when she read our reports. She wrote two simple examples that have helped me ever since. She had a degree in English.
Confused about the meaning of peruse? An argument is made that a deletion from the English language would help us all. Benjamin can be your new main man.
And then there's that lay/laying/laid/lie/lying/lain usage thing that makes me cringe. I remember perhaps the 3rd grade teacher writing on the board that the next day were were going to learn about their usage. I was out sick the next day, and have forever been scared of those words.
I have to say, reading about them in 'Dreyer's English' I still break out in a bit of a sweat. I've learned that when in doubt, look it up. But, you might not understand the explanation. What then? I duck. I take a detour.
Thus, I wrote in a preceding sentence that my audit manager "wrote two simple examples" rather than write, "she laid out two examples," which might be right, but I'm not going to get a ruling on the field and I'd like to finish this piece as best as I can.
I am, after all, my own copy editor. How naked can you get?
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