was she trying for irony?

[cellio]

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation sounds like a great book for grammar nerds, but I am put off somewhat by the 1.5 punctuation errors in the title. (One is debatable and might be excused by context (it refers to a joke containing the phrase); the other is clearly wrong.)

Comments

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

She's British, so for her it may not be an error.

Actually, one of the complaints I read about the American printing of the book was that there was no introduction added to explain the differences between American and British English grammar.

[cellio]

She's British, so for her it may not be an error.

Hmm, I hadn't considered that. I know that the missing comma is controversial, but I didn't realize there might be a flavor of English that permits the missing hyphen. (I hope anyone with direct experience will speak up.)

Yeah, if there are grammar differences and they published it here without any hints to that effect, I'd probably be frustrated too.

[ironangel]

I know that the missing comma is controversial

Both formats are now equally acceptable. We went several rounds on this on in my technical writing class. No clue on the hypen, though. :)

And you can hear her in person tomorrow

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

On morning edition on NPR.

My favorite line of the clip was

"Those old things over there are my husbands"

[rani23.livejournal.com]

Another thing to consider is that the author doesn't usually have control over what the front of the book looks like -- that's often up to the publisher.

[cellio]

True. I guess I had hoped that in the case of a grammar book they'd be more careful about doing what the author specifies. :-)

[sui66iy.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, if you type "zero tolerance" into Amazon's search box, only one of the top ten titles presented contains a hyphen. (Adding the hyphen to the search expression does not change this.)

This is consistent with the Wikipedia's claim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyphen) that most advertising and labeling eschews use of the hyphen in favor of visual cleanliness.

(The comma thing was obviously intentional. The whole point is to attract the attention of grammar sticklers such as yourself.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/tim_/]

In, I think, the T_EXbook, or possibly the L^AT_EX book, or some such similar book on computerized typesetting published by Addison-Wesley, on the very first page after the cover appeared the usual list of the publisher's cities, including "Signapore". You'd think that would be boilerplate that would just be copied and pasted into every book they did, but I guess not. This was less than 10 years ago, too, so it's not like the use of computers in publishing was a new thing. Not quite the same thing as here, but close.

[murmur311.livejournal.com]

The missing comma isn't necessarily a British thing, either. The editors here (at my magazine) are very adamant about not having that last comma- something I discovered when I began doing the calendar listings.

the comma

[cellio]

And she's clearly referring to a joke where punctuation is central, so there's an argument for exactly duplicating that. (I would have put the phrase in quotes in that case, but perhaps publishers object to the first character in a book title being punctuation?)

[steven.livejournal.com]

I'm not a fan of the serial comma, but I'd hyphenate "zero tolerance."

[cellio]

I wasn't until I encountered nesting. The serial comma makes phrases like the following easier to parse: "salad, salt and pepper, and vinegar and oil".

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

My favorite serial-comma argument is "I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."

(That was the example that convinced Steve Jackson Games to change its house style to use the serial comma.)

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Um, I see no grammar mistakes - what comma, where? (bear in mind I'm a Brit)

[cellio]

In the US, there's a long-standing debate about whether, in a list of N items (N > 2), you place a comma before the "and". So "X, Y, and Z" versus "X, Y and Z". I am from the camp that says that the first is required, but I recognize that the other camp exists. :-)

Over here we are taught to hyphenate multi-word adjectives (some say just two-word adjectives), so it should be "zero-tolerance approach", not "zero tolerance approach". What do they teach in the UK?

[amergina.livejournal.com]

If I remember correctly from talking to Karen, The Associated Press uses the X, Y & Z form of commas. All the papers she ever worked at followed the AP guidelines. I prefer the X, Y, & Z form and use it in my documentation. As long as the usage is consistent, it's fine. :)

[cellio]

Consistency is important, yes (and harder to achieve on multi-writer projects such as newspapers). I'm glad that in the field of technical writing there's generally more tolerance of precision in writing. :-) (Sadly, one previous employer insisted on certain grammatical points that made the resulting documentation incorrect -- or, if you tried to work around that, clunky. This is what happens when you give people management positions based on politics rather than on merit.)

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

The lack of hyphenation in zero-tolerance seems to be controversial, but ... When I learned copy editing at my university paper (we used the AP stylebook), I seem to remember that the rule was to hyphenate if the words in question were being used as an adjective (as they are here) and not to hyphenate if the words in question were being used as a noun. To wit:

"I have zero tolerance for this approach."

vs.

"The principal's zero-tolerance policy won enthusiastic support from parents."

[cellio]

Yes, I agree with this. The hyphenation is due to adjectival use, not to some inherent property of the phrase. You'll sometimes see effects from people who only learned "hyphens are important", in both noun and verb phrases (e.g. "log-in to the computer").

ampersand?

[caryabend.livejournal.com]

I used to place a comma between the last two items in a list, even when using the word "and." This changed for me within the last several years when I found that it violated some revised grammar rules. (Similar to the "one space after the period between sentences" rule.)

What I don't know is if substituting the ampersand symbol changes the rule for placing a comma. I suspect it may, but I don't have a trustworthy non-web reference handy.

Re: ampersand?

[cellio]

What I don't know is if substituting the ampersand symbol changes the rule for placing a comma.

That's a very good question for which I do not have an answer.

As for one versus two spaces between sentences, I know that this is changing but, especially in fixed-width fonts, I still find text easier to read when the two-space convention is followed. Yeah, a web browser or Word or whatever is going to squish 'em down, but at least the source I'm editing in Emacs (or typing as email or an LJ comment) will still be easier for me to work with and proof-read.

Re: ampersand?

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

It's not still two spaces after a final stop like a period, question mark or exclamation point? I don't even think about that; I just type it that way.

as one professional to another

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Serial commas are not required by all style guides. I didn't use them myself until I had to learn Chicago style. In fact, when I worked for a professor who used them, he told me they were old-fashioned and on their way out. Even though I am used to them now, that's mostly because I work for an academic audience. Popular contexts (such as newspapers and magazines) omit the serial comma, and that's fine!

I guess writers really have no control over the cover

[rectangularcat]

The title is not the same in the British Version...

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/referenceandlanguages/story/0,6000,1097818,00.html

Re: I guess writers really have no control over the cover

[rectangularcat]

Never mind - for some reason I thought the title was the Queen of Pedants.

*sheepish grin*