Book review: Eats, Shoots & Leaves

[brown_betty]

Lynne Truss' (!) Eats, Shoots & Leaves is the sort of book that will appeal to everyone who is enraged by commas, and anyone who would like to see George Bernard Shaw apostrophize T. E. Lawrence on his use of semi-colons. (Everyone, I assume.) It will produce in the reader a vague feeling that one has probably made a grievous punctuation error in the preceding paragraph. I have learned the useful name of "Yob's comma" for the comma for which no defence can be made, as well as that I owe Petra an apology. Babs' things may indeed be written Babs's things, although I do not intend to. I offer the following to show why I intend to ignore this terrifying system of punctuation. Current guides to punctuation (including that ultimate authority, Fowler's Modern English Usage)state that with modern names ending in "s" (including biblical names, and any foreign name with an unpronounced final "s"), the "s" is required after the apostrophe: Keats's poems
Philippa Jones's book
St James's Square
Alexander Dumas's The Three Musketeers
With names from the ancient world, it is not: Archimedes' screw
Achilles' heel
If the name eds in an "iz" sound, an exception is made: Bridges' score
Moses' tablets
And an exception is always made for Jesus: Jesus' disciples