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.

[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.

[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.

[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. :-)

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?)

[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. :)

[steven.livejournal.com]

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

[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?

[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.)

[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".

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Ah, right, the latter is correct in the UK, the extra comma would be marked as incorrect. And besides, its the fact that the first comma is mistakenly put into a sentence which requires neither that is the pun of the title (and a book I really must read some time).

Both forms of the adjective thing are valid, as far as I know.

Thanks for explaining!

[cellio]

Thanks for the reply!

Yup, preserving the original (incorrect) comma from the joke justifies the comma thing. Personally, I (in the US) would have punctuated the title as follows: "Eats, Shoots & Leaves": The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. And I know my high-school grammar teacher would throw a hissy fit over the placement of the colon outside the close quote (it's definitely a minority position among non-tech-writer writers); I would be willing to concede a dash (not a hyphen) to replace the colon (outside the quote!) as a gesture of cooperation. :-) But the quotes would signal clearly that the initial phrase is a quotation from elsewhere and not my text.

[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]

the extra comma would be marked as incorrect

Interesting. So is the following really punctuated correctly according to those who would do that marking? "jazz, rhythm and blues and Peter, Paul and Mary"

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

FWIW, I was taught that the second is proper usage and that the first was wrong.

[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."

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Um, not sure. I know that items in a list must be separated by a comma unless there's an and, but your example is properly two separate things so I think it could go either way.

Having said that, despite having picked up a very keen sense of grammar over the years I didn't get much formal tuition in it, so the finer points sometimes elude me, time to reach for Fowler's English Grammar and Usage for a definitive version!

[cellio]

Are you talking about commas or hyphens?

[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").

[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.)

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.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

The commas. Here's how I was taught:

A, B and Z <- correct
A, B, and Z <- wrong

[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.)