Printers/Punctuation/Truss

With this blog, it’s time to write some sort of introduction. Books seem to get in the way of intentions sometimes in my case, those books you’ve read about already in these blogs, for example. But if I’m going to write about literature, that’s books, and if I’m going to write about life, that’s literature. You can’t separate the two. Then I may stir into the pot something about food and cooking. Certainly a peppercorn or two about writing, for that is what I do. So far, the Flesch-Kincaid reading level of this blog is grade 8.1, about the same as that of Reader’s Digest, with a reading ease of 69.3 percent. It will likely stay at that level (though I do enjoy throwing in a challenging word occasionally) for I do want my readers of varying ages to stick with me.

Clarification now about my punctuation. (That’s a fragment and I use them. Just check them in current novels and see they are acceptable today.) Most American readers don’t notice much change in the pattern of punctuation as time passes. However, it is the business of writers to know and new stylebooks come out every year to keep them up to date. On the other hand, some authors have created their own rules, accepted by their publishers, or possibly vice versa. One example is a book that uses a short dash (–) to designate dialogue is starting but with no closing dash. The reasoning behind such changes seems to dominate the minds of—guess who—printers! The human kind. Now shouldn’t that “guess who” have a question mark after it? I opt not to give it one in this historical age. Besides, “guess who” isn’t a question. And in my sentence, it should be “guess whom” anyway. I use something like poet’s license for my style at times, though I know the rules. Let me add quickly here that printers must be trying to save ink, and in the long run, paper, for the dollar is king. Notice how much ink a set of quotation marks necessitates and how much the short dash does. In Lynn Truss’s excellent little best seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves you can find the notation that printers are to blame.

So, what’s happening now in punctuation? I see quotation marks disappearing altogether, for italics are cheaper. But the comma seems destined to be a while longer the point of disagreement. Should the rules depend on the cost of ink in a rich country, or should they originate with the creators of literature who surely feel every question, pause and stop in the stories they write? Lynn Truss campaigns for writers to uphold tradition in such matters, particularly for the apostrophe. I agree with her, but in this blog, I will still use my poet’s license. Please remember that before you condemn me.