A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like animal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
Which brings me to the title of this beautiful book from which I quote part of a chapter headed "The Tractable Apostrophe":
In Beachcomber's hilarious columns about the Apostrophe Royal in "The Express", a certain perversely comforting law is often reiterated: The Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: "For every apostrophe omitted from an it's, there is an extra one put into an its." Thus the number of apostrophes in circumlation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall.
The only illiteracy with apostrophes that stirs any sympathy in me is the greengrocer's variety. First, because greengrocers are self-evidently horny-thumbed people who do not live by words. And second, because I agree with them that something rather troubling and unsatisfactory happens to words ending in vowels when you just plonk an "s" on the end. Take the word "bananas": at first glance, you might suppose that the last syllable is pronounced "ass". How can the word "banana" keep its pronounciation when pluralised? Well, you could stick an apostrophe before the "s"! Obviously there is no excuse for not knowing "potatoes" is the plural of "potato", but if you were just to put an "s" after it, the impulse to separate it from the "o" with some mark or other would be pretty compelling, because "potatos" would be pronounced, surely, "pot-at-oss".
Moreover, what many people don't know, as they fulminate against ignorant greengrocers, is that until the 19th century this was one of the legitimate uses of the apostrophe: to separate a plural "s" from a foreign word ending in a vowel, and thus prevent confusion about pronounciation. Thus, you would see in an 18th-century text folio's or quarto's - and it looks rather elegant. I just wish a different mark had been employed (or even invented) for the purpose, to take the strain off our long-suffering little friend; and I hear, in fact, that there are moves afoot among certain punctuation visionaries to revive the practice using the tilde (the Spanish accent we all have on our keyboards which looks like this: ~). Thus: quart~s and folio~s, not to mention logo~s, pasta~s, ouzo~s and banana~s. For the time being, however, the guardians of usage frown very deeply on anyone writing "quarto's". As Professor Loreto Todd tartly remarks in her excellent "Cassell's Guide to Punctuation" (1995), "This usage was correct once, just as it was once considered correct to drink tea from a saucer."
It would be nice if one day the number of apostrophes properly placed in it's equalled exactly the number of apostrophes properly omitted from its, instead of the other way round. In the meantime, what can be done by those of us sickened by the state of apostrophe abuse? First, we must refute the label "dinosaurs" (I really hate that). And second, we must take up arms. Here are the weapons required in the apostrophe war (stop when you start to feel uncomfortable):
- correction fluid
- big pens
- stickers cut in a variety of sizes, both plain (for sticking over unwanted apostrophes) and coloured (for inserting where apostrophes are needed)
- tin of paint with big brush
- guerilla-style clothing
- strong medication for personal disorder
- loudhailer
- gun
Evidently there used to be a shopkeeper in Bristol who deliberately stuck ungrammatical signs in his window as a ruse to draw people into the shop; they would come in to complain, and he would talk them into buying something. Well, he would be ill-advised to repeat this ploy once my punctuation vigilantes are on the loose. We lovers of the apostrophe will not stand by and let it be abolished - not because we are dinosaurs who drink tea out of saucers (interesting image) but because we appreciate the way the apostrophe has for centuries graced our words and illuminated our meaning. It is no fault of the apostrophe that some of our words need so much help identifying themselves. Indeed, it is to the credit of the apostrophe that it can manage the task. Those spineless types who talk about abolishing the apostrophe are missing the point, and the pun is very much intended. The next day after the abolition of the apostrophe, imagine the scene. Triumphant abolitionist sits down to write, "Goodbye to the Apostrophe: we're not missing you a bit!" and finds that he can't. Abolish the apostrophe and it will be necessary, before the hour is up, to reinvent it.
The book is a wonderful read! And, of course, its very title is a take-off on the importance of punctuation. Which reminds me of a John Bourke in the ledger department of the ANZ Bank in Canberra in the sixties who used to compare a certain fellow-worker to a wombat who, as he put it, "eats, roots and leaves".
You don't have to be a grammarian to value good punctuation. You are still allowed to think that a suburdinate clause is one of Santa's little helpers while at the same time appreciating the use of proper punctuation. And it may well keep you out of trouble as these two identical but differently punctuated "Dear John" letters illustrate:
Example 1:
Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy - will you let me be yours?
Jill
Example 2:
Dear John,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn! For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Jill
aka the Scarlet Pimpernel of Punctuation
P.S.
