Eats, Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss [48]
There are two reasons why I have borne this ballpoint outburst in mind while writing this book. One is that if Eric Partridge wasn’t comprehensive enough for some people, there is obviously naff-all chance for me. But there is also the fact that this startling effusion has lain within the pages of You Have a Point There possibly for fifty years, which is as long as the book itself has been a book. And this makes me wistful. The future of books is a large subject and perhaps this is not a suitable place to pursue it. We hear every day that the book is dead and that even the dimmest child can find “anything” on the internet. Yet I’m afraid I have to stick my small oar in because – as I hope has become clear from the foregoing chapters – our system of punctuation was produced in the age of printing, by printers, and is reliant on the ascendancy of printing to survive. Our punctuation exists as a printed set of conventions; it has evolved slowly because of printing’s innate conservatism; and is effective only if readers have been trained to appreciate the nuances of the printed page. The good news for punctuation is that the age of printing has been glorious and has held sway for more than half a millennium. The bad news for punctuation, however, is that the age of printing is due to hold its official retirement party next Friday afternoon at half-past five.
“I blame all the emails and text messages,” people say, when you talk about the decline in punctuation standards. Well, yes. The effect on language of the electronic age is obvious to all, even though the process has only just begun, and its ultimate impact is as yet unimaginable.
“I write quite differently in emails,” people say, with a look of inspired and happy puzzlement – a look formerly associated only with starry-eyed returnees from alien abduction. “Yes, I write quite differently in emails, especially in the punctuation. I feel it’s OK to use dashes all the time, and exclamation marks. And those dot, dot, dot things!”
“Ellipsis,” I interject.
“I can’t seem to help it!” they continue. “It’s as if I’ve never heard of semicolons! Dot, dot, dot! And everyone’s doing the same!”
This is an exciting time for the written word: it is adapting to the ascendant medium, which happens to be the most immediate, universal and democratic written medium that has ever existed. But it is all happening too quickly for some people, and we have to face some uncomfortable facts: for example, it is already too late to campaign for Heinz to add punctuation marks to the Alphabetti Spaghetti, in the hope that all will be well.
Having grown up as readers of the printed word (and possibly even scribblers in margins), we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading – so let us remind ourselves. The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order. We read privately, mentally listening to the writer’s voice and translating the writer’s thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and a pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.
All these conditions for reading are overturned by the new technologies. Information is presented to us in a non-linear way, through an exponential series of lateral associations. The internet is a public “space” which