Spluttering over a split infinitive? Seething about a semi-colon? Literally reduced to gibbering paroxysms by misuse of the word ‘literally’? … Few debates are as incendiary as those to do with grammar and punctuation. Small wonder that Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (2003) was a book sensation, selling over three million copies.
Oxford, birthplace of the world’s greatest dictionary, inevitably has an important presence in any such discussion. Argument centres on the so-called ‘Oxford Comma’, defined (in the OED) as ‘the comma used immediately before a co-ordinating conjunction, preceding the final item in a list of three’. Thus: ‘red, white, and blue’.
Redundant you might think; but consider this sentence: ‘I would like to thank my parents, Sir Ian McKellen and Dame Judi Dench.’ Or this infamous Times review of a BBC travel documentary: ‘Highlights of his global tour include encounters with Nelson Mandela, an 800-year-old demigod and a dildo collector.’
The Oxford University Press style manual (Chapter 5, section 5.3, pp. 121-22) explains its editorial policy thus:
Given that the final comma is sometimes necessary to prevent ambiguity, it is logical to impose it uniformly, so as to obviate the need to pause and gauge each enumeration on the likelihood of being misunderstood – especially since the likelihood is often more obvious to the reader than the writer.
Other style manuals beg to differ – and quite frankly it’s difficult to see how the matter can be resolved peacefully.
There is, however, one issue upon which linguistic pedants are thunderously unanimous: the apostrophe. Morris Oxford takes this opportunity to celebrate ‘The Apostrophiser’ who, under the cloak of night, corrects offending signs, either by deleting erroneous ingressions or inserting correct versions of the possessive genitive.
We cannot, alas, claim The Apostrophiser as an Oxonian (like that other urban pimpernel, Banksy, he is said to hail from Bristol) but we have found examples of his fine work in our city.
So far his brief hasn’t extended to restoring missing letters to their rightful place on the walls of august institutions.
Or shop fascias. As and when it does, we think we may have just the job for him …
We were going to end this Story with the latest Grog Shop update – a complete Zen-like absence of letters.
And then we saw this!
How to conclude? Let’s give the final word on this sensitive topic to the American rock band, Vampire Weekend:
Feedback
‘A parishioner from Linton Road’ pointed out this instance of divine apostrophic intervention:
We are reliably informed that Sainsbury’s has an entire department dedicated to the cause.
Our thanks to, er, ‘Edward’ for sending this cartoon:
Special commendation to Duncan Taylor who meticulously catalogued the changing face of the Grog Shop, and assembled this collage, entitled ‘Decline and Fall’.
Nothing escapes the eagle-eye of Stephanie Jenkins.
Attached is a sign (sadly removed from the Woodstock Road by builders in c.2012) showing how a Victorian sign-writer had to put the apostrophe sideways in ST GILES’S TERRACE in order to fit it in.
And have you seen the old Victorian sign QUEENS-LANE with the apostrophe missing? This is particularly heinous due to the important distinction between Queen’s in Oxford and Queens’ in Cambridge.
The Story above refers to Nelson Mandela and dildos. The link below invokes strippers and Stalin. (What is it about grammarians?!) Thanks to Eddy Canfor-Dumas for drawing it to our attention.
Geraldine Hayman writes:
A whole chapter of Lynne Truss’s book is dedicated to what she calls ‘The Tractable Apostrophe’. In it she praises the apostrophe’s versatility and importance. ‘It has never been taken seriously enough,’ she bemoans, ‘but rather cruelly taken for granted; and now, in an age of supreme graphic frivolity, we pay the price.’ (p.36)
Catherine Robinson, guiding spirit behind the transformation of The Trap Grounds, is a passionate believer in the Oxford comma. Some time ago she was moved to write to The Times:
Dear Rose Wild,
According to your column dated 29 August 2020, some years ago The Times abandoned the convention of including a comma between the penultimate item in a list and the conjunction ‘and’, apparently in a wish not to appear ‘self-conscious or eccentric’.
Trained as a copy-editor at the Oxford University Press 40 years ago, and employed subsequently as an editor at Oxfam for many years, I have never wavered in my respect for the so-called Oxford, or serial, comma. There is nothing self-conscious or eccentric in aspiring to write clear, easily intelligible prose. The Oxford comma serves both writers and readers well, avoiding the risk of ambiguity in a sentence such as ‘The street kids dart among the cars, selling cigarettes, chewing gum and shoelaces’. Or (to quote another unfortunate example): ‘Besides planting, weeding, cooking and tending her children, Elena works in the local market.’ The lives of those poor children could have been saved by the insertion of a comma after ‘cooking’. Surely it makes sense to adopt the serial comma in every case, rather than obliging both writer and reader to stop mid-flow to check the meaning of such ambiguous statements?
Sincerely,
Catherine Robinson
Catherine says she received ‘a terse reply’, saying that they would have to agree to differ.
Judith Curthoys of Christ Church draws our attention to the indefatigable work of the Apostrophe Protection Society – and this fine range of corrective crockery.
Readers may be wondering about the fate of the missing letters. A Grog Shop neighbour writes:
We are the proud possessors of one of the Grog Shop fallen ‘O’s.
It resides on our kitchen window and was a parting gift from Daniel Handler (author of the Lemony Snicket series) and his wife Lisa Brown, a gifted book illustrator. They stayed with us for a year. Daniel always felt the ‘O’ should be displayed sideways. As you can see, we’ve honoured their wishes.Miranda Creswell
