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Eats, Roots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation: Difference between revisions
Eats, Roots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (view source)
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{{quote|“Someone wrote to say that my use of “one’s” was wrong (“a common error”), and that it should be “ones”. This is such rubbish that I refuse to argue about it. Go and tell Virginia Woolf it should be “A Room of Ones Own” and see how far you get.”}} | {{quote|“Someone wrote to say that my use of “one’s” was wrong (“a common error”), and that it should be “ones”. This is such rubbish that I refuse to argue about it. Go and tell Virginia Woolf it should be “A Room of Ones Own” and see how far you get.”}} | ||
Virginia Woolf’s been dead for seventy years, so this is tough to do. But it doesn’t mean Virginia Woolf was right. And Truss fails explain why this is “such rubbish”. | Virginia Woolf’s been dead for seventy years, so this is tough to do. But it doesn’t mean Virginia Woolf was right. And Truss fails explain why this is “such rubbish”.<ref>Many years after posting this review, I was put out of my misery by a correspondent who kindly explained why "one's" should indeed take an apostrophe: "It is only ''personal possessive'' pronouns (mine, his, her, our, etc) that do not take apostrophes. "One" is an indefinite pronoun, so using it in the possessive sense ... it takes an apostrophe, and hence why we ought not torture Ms Woolf in her grave."</ref> | ||
Finally, the book’s title: I don’t think she gets the joke. It has nothing to do with waiters or pistols (perhaps a maiden aunt told her that one?) and certainly doesn’t need a “badly punctuated wildlife manual” to work, because it isn’t a grammatical play; it’s an oral one. The joke doesn’t work when you write it down, precisely because of that ambiguous comma. You have to say it out loud (in spoken English, there is no punctuation at all). | Finally, the book’s title: I don’t think she gets the joke. It has nothing to do with waiters or pistols (perhaps a maiden aunt told her that one?) and certainly doesn’t need a “badly punctuated wildlife manual” to work, because it isn’t a grammatical play; it’s an oral one. The joke doesn’t work when you write it down, precisely because of that ambiguous comma. You have to say it out loud (in spoken English, there is no punctuation at all). | ||
They missed the chance to re-title the New Zealand edition of this book, because the local version of the joke (which employs a delightful expression from NZ English) is funnier: The Kiwi, it is said, is the most anti-social bird in the bush, and no-one likes to invite it to parties, because, if it turns up at all, it just eats roots and leaves. | They missed the chance to re-title the New Zealand edition of this book, because the local version of the joke (which employs a delightful expression from NZ English) is funnier: The Kiwi, it is said, is the most anti-social bird in the bush, and no-one likes to invite it to parties, because, if it turns up at all, it just eats roots and leaves. | ||
{{sa}} | |||
*[[Pedantry]] | |||
*[[Fish principle]] | |||
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The joke’s about shagging, Lynne. | The joke’s about shagging, Lynne. | ||