Would you like some grammar with that spite?

JUNE CASAGRANDE

Is it just me, or is this “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” business getting

a little out of hand?

Those of you lucky enough to live hermit-like in Unabomber-style

shacks have probably been spared the hype over a book about

punctuation topping bestseller lists while inspiring quite a few

superior grammarians to ink their language annoyances.

Suddenly everyone’s an expert. Suddenly, everyone thinks they’re

me. The nerve.

My initial reaction to learning about the book and witnessing the

hype has been immature indeed.

You know how a 5-year-old who a week before did some cartwheels

might feel ripped off if he sees someone on TV doing cartwheels? You

know, that “Hey, they stole my idea!” narcissism? And you know how

that child may go a step further and bitterly criticize the TV

cartwheels? “That’s not how you’re supposed to do it! I’m the one who

does it right!”

Well, that’s the level of emotional maturity I exhibited when I

came across reviews and commentaries in the New York Times, Los

Angeles Times and other publications. I was very embarrassed by this

reaction until I actually read these commentaries.

Now, by comparison, I think I’m pretty mature.

“There’s not much chance that a book whose title hinges on a bad

joke poses a threat to such classics as Strunk and White’s ‘Elements

of Style,’ Henry Fowler’s ‘Dictionary of Modern English Usage’ and

George Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language,’” Dennis Baron

wrote in Friday’s Los Angeles Times. “But it shares the faults of the

genre: Relying on such books for advice on writing is like relying on

the almanac for a weather forecast.”

In the May 3 New York Times, John Rosenthal gets in the shot:

“Thanks to Lynne Truss’ bestseller, ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’ ... if

[a] hard-working immigrant makes a sign for ‘carrot’s,’ some

fussbudget will now be emboldened to correct his punctuation.”

Edmund Morris in the April 25 New York Times called Truss’ prose

“cloying” and added, “Whole stretches of the book read like voice

mail.”

After all that venom, none of these critics manages to make clear

what they’re so angry about. I suspect they’re not so sure

themselves. Yet they all go on to show how much smarter they are than

Truss herself, invoking esoteric literary references, droning on

about the semicolon and throwing in lots of words like picayune,

orthographically and logography.

They all offer plenty of criticism, but little that’s constructive

or instructive to readers who really would like some help with

grammar and punctuation. Baron lumps Truss’ book in with a half dozen

others and basically writes them all off as stupid and dangerous in

the hands of dolts.

After his column comes our big clue to his real problem: “Dennis

Baron is the author of seven books on the English language.” I don’t

suppose any of them is an autobiography titled “Eats Sour Grapes and

Leaves (in a Huff).”

Another clue comes from Morris: “At risk of sounding parochial

myself, I wish that Truss had devoted a few pages to taking on the

usage czars of American academe -- particularly those at the Modern

Language Association and University of Chicago Press, whose

anti-capital, anti-hyphen, anti-italic stylebooks seek to return

modern logography to the uniformity of ancient papyri.”

I never want to come off as someone who had some bug crawl up her

papyri and die because clearly I can’t compete with these guys. So

I’ll just continue trying to be helpful and humble (in my own

dazzling way) instead of 100% self-serving.

So, in that spirit, here’s this week’s help. As we covered before,

hyphens are used to connect compound modifiers, two words that work

together to make up an adjective or sometimes an adverb: a

family-oriented film. But here’s a trick I didn’t cover: Don’t use

hyphens with adverbs ending in ly. In the term “happily married

couple,” you don’t need a hyphen to tell you that “happily” and

“married” are working together as an adjective. The ly already tips

you off. But be careful of ly nouns like family. “Family-oriented

film” is correct. “Unhappily obsessed grammar snobs” is correct as

well.

* JUNE CASAGRANDE covers Newport Beach and John Wayne Airport. She

may be reached at (949) 574-4232 or by e-mail at

[email protected].