Full stop
Alan Watkins
You Have a Point There Eric Partridge (Routledge £2.50 paper) Eric Partridge, a New Zealander by origin, is eighty-four. For years he has written with dedication and enthusiasm about most aspects of the use and misuse of English — and on other things too. He is, I suppose, better known for his entertaining travels in the byways of slang and catch-phrase than as a grammarian. The present book, a paperback reissue of one first published in 1953, is about punctuation. We are all indebted to Partridge: a different country would have bestowed honours upon him and elected him to professorships and to membership of learned bodies. What follows is accordingly intended in the friendliest spirit.
The trouble is not that there are 'no rules' about punctuation. There are; and I think Partridge himself breaks some of them. More of that later. But the real trouble is that, I should estimate, over half the topics dealt with by him fall outside the writer's control. It is all very well for him to say that 'St' is preferable to 'St.' as an abbreviation for 'Saint' because the last letter of the abbreviation is the same as the last letter of the original word. The Cambridge University Press agrees with him. So does the Spectator. So do more printers and typographers than when he originally wrote. But let him, or any writer, try laying down the law to a newspaper or publishing firm whose house style is different. He will be told: We can't alter our way of doing things just for you.
Let me take another example. The Observer (or The Observer as it likes to call itself: Partridge does not go into the difficult question of newspaper titles) is wholly tolerant about what I write for it. It nevertheless insists on enclosing the titles of books between commas rather than putting them in italic. This seems to me both contrary to usage and destructive of the dis tinction, which, in giving references, it is often necessary to make, between essays and volumes: for example, George Orwell, 'Boys' Weeklies' in Collected Essays. . Or let us assume that the writer is writing not for publication but for the Post Office. I shall address this review to Geoffrey Wheatcroft, Esq.
Spectator 56 Doughty St W.C.1 Partridge agrees, though he would omit the comma after 'Wheatcroft'. But if I were doing a letter-writing exercise for an oldfashioned teacher, if any such still exist, he (more likely she) might well say: 'Wrong. You have left out the commas after Esquire, Spectator, Fifty-six and Street — and don't abbreviate Street. And put in a full stop after W.C.1.' Dotty, of course, but it would avail me nothing to fling Partridge at the wretched woman. People who think they know can be very intolerant about these things.
Let me move from the procedural, so to speak, to the substantive. I deal not with the illustrations which Partridge has chosen but rather with the text of the book itself. For example, he writes: 'The omission of this comma would not only create ambiguity, it would positively falsify the intended meaning.' Let us forget about the 'this comma' to which Partridge is referring and concentrate on the comma which he actually uses, the one after 'ambiguity'. Right or wrong? I say wrong. One of three stops would have been permissible after 'ambiguity': a colon, a semi-colon or a full stop. The comma here is semi-literate. If he did not want to complicate the sentence with too much punctuation he had two choices: either to delete the comma, it' and 'would' and substitute 'but'; or, more clumsily, to place the first 'would' after 'not only' and substitute 'but' for the comma and 'it'.
Again, Partridge writes: 'If anyone objects, But that is a matter of style, not a matter of education.' Not putting inverted commas around something which is not a true quotation, but beginning it instead with a capital letter, is defensible and often sensible, as in `If anyone asks: What about the workers?' Another example is to be found at the end of the second paragraph of this review. However, the practice is not fully accepted even today. The text of a work on punctuation should, I think, err on the side of conservatism. But most writers on grammar, syntax, punctuation and usage tend to confuse the functions of proselytiser and guide. Partridge is no exception.
He also writes about 'material that is much more complex than all pupils, most students, and many scholars, writers, jour nalists realise'. There is a disease from which even practised writers are not immune. It is an inclination to cut out what are thought to be unnecessary 'ands'. Take the above clause. It can be divided either into two, with 'pupils' and 'students' distinguished from 'scholars', 'writers' and `journalists'; or into three, with 'all', 'most' and 'many' as the governing structural words. Either way Partridge has got his construction wrong. ,Under the first interpretation it should go: 'all pupils and most students, and many scholars, writers and journalists'. Under the second interpretation it should go: 'all pupils, most students, and many scholars, writers and journalists.'
I am also highly dubious about whether the semi-colon can properly be used to introduce enumerations or lists; the colon or the dash is surely preferable. Partridge further makes what I think is a wholly misguided attempt to revive the interpolative use of the colon and the semi-colon, as used in eighteenth-century prose to break up sentences. An example he cites (not from the eighteenth century) is: 'He was: as all men know: a rascal.' I am glad that such bizarre punctuation has not caught on. Moreover, Partridge does not fully understand that paragraphing is basically typographical rather than literary. The words in this review would be no different if they were appearing in the Observer: but the paragraphs would be shorter. People who are interested in this kind of thing, of whom I am one, will want to acquire this book, if they do not possess it already. But I do not recommend it as a reliable guide.
Previous page
