HAVE YOU EAT EN GRANDMA?
Hopefully not! But as GYLES BRANDRETH reveals, people might think you have if you forget a simple comma. Now feast yourself on his essential (and wickedly entertaining) guide — and you’ll never cannibalise the English language again
LANGUAGE is what makes us human. As the philosopher Bertrand Russell remarked: ‘No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor but honest. Only language can do that.’ Language is also power, and how we use it defines us. Think of Winston Churchill: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’
Think of John Prescott: ‘It was a terrible flight. Thank God I’m back on terra cotta.’
And since the way we use language tells the world so much about us, it’s worth getting it right.
I’m a language obsessive and a punctuation perfectionist. (That doesn’t mean to say I always get it right, but I always aim to.) My mother was a teacher; my father was a lawyer; they brought me up with a love of words. As a child, I read dictionaries at breakfast and asked for a copy of Fowler’s Modern English Usage for my tenth birthday.
I have loved word games all my life. When I was 23, I founded the British Scrabble Championships. Since then, whether as a journalist or a broadcaster, an actor or a politician, words have been central to my life.
I am passionate about the English language. All research shows that the better the English you speak and write, the happier and more successful you will be.
People with better English get better jobs because they write better CVs and communicate more effectively in interviews. People who punctuate poorly and spell badly are marked down in examinations — and in life.
People with better English are more likely to secure the partner of their dreams because (the research shows) when it comes to wooing, words are more important than looks, money, or sex appeal.
PEOPLE with better English skills are healthier and live longer lives because they can understand and communicate better with doctors, nurses, and carers. Good English makes all the difference. And, alarmingly, good English is under threat.
In a recent survey, four out of five teachers expressed concern about the vocabulary range of their teenage pupils. Apparently, ‘many are unable to understand questions in test papers, leading, in some cases, to low self-esteem’.
Some 11-year-olds did not know words such as ‘complete’, ‘replace’ and ‘insert’. Some 16-year-olds struggled with ‘explain’, ‘identify’ and ‘analyse’.
Another survey revealed that while nine out of ten primary school children could identify a Dalek, only a third could recognise and name a magpie.
And it is not only children. Threequarters of adults now use emojis to communicate with one another. If a small digital image — designed by someone else and generated for you — can express how you feel, who needs words?
Punctuation is essential to clear communication. Without punctuation, no one knows what’s going on. It is crucial...but the rules are changing. Spelling is important today in a way that it wasn’t when Shakespeare was a boy.
Grammar isn’t set in stone. Once upon a time, to split an infinitive was wrong, wrong, wrong. Since the coming of Star Trek in 1966, promising ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’, we’ve all been at it.
The rules may change, but it is important to know them, nonetheless. Here is the Brandreth guide to grammatical howlers and how to avoid them.
COMMAS
I ONCE met a lovely man who told me, with pride and a happy smile on his face, that he had eaten his grandma. And his grandpa, too.
He belonged to the Gadaba people who live in the Indian states of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh. It is a Gadaba tradition, he explained, to absorb the best of your grandparents’ generation by eating them as soon as you can after they have died.
This isn’t as grisly as it sounds. First, you feed your dear departed to the fish in the local river, and then you eat the fish.
In any other culture, the question, ‘Have you eaten grandma?’ should be addressed only to your grandmother and should always contain a comma: ‘Have you eaten, Grandma?’
Here are some further examples highlighting the importance of a well-placed comma:
On a magazine cover: Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog (add the comma after ‘cooking’).
At a bus station: Toilets only for disabled pregnant children (you should add the commas after ‘disabled’ and ‘pregnant’).
On a school computer: We’re going to learn to cut and paste kids! (Add the comma after ‘paste’.)
In a country park in New York state: Hunters please use caution when hunting pedestrians using walk trail (add the comma after ‘hunting’). You remember the old riddle: Q) What’s the difference between a cat and a comma? A) One has its claws at the end of its paws, and one is a pause at the end of a clause.
That tells you much that you need to know about the comma, but, maddeningly, not quite everything.
A comma marks a momentary pause between different parts of a sentence — like an almost unnoticeable intake of breath. Commas exist to make the meaning of sentences clear by grouping and separating words, phrases, and clauses. For instance, how many people am I talking about here, two or four? ‘I want to thank my parents, Charles and Alice.’
If it’s just two people, my parents who are called Charles and Alice, one comma is sufficient. But if it’s four — my parents plus Charles and Alice — you need to add an extra comma to your list: ‘I want to thank my parents, Charles, and Alice.’
You use commas to separate clauses in what the grammarians call ‘complex sentences’ — that is, sentences complicated by the fact that they contain a ‘main clause’ and one or more ‘subordinate clauses’. And once again, it’s all about making things clear. ‘Most of the time, travellers worry about their luggage’ is both true and correctly punctuated. Lose that comma after the fourth word and suddenly we’re in Doctor Who territory: ‘Most of the time travellers worry about their luggage.’ The main clause tells you the main thing: ‘Travellers worry about their luggage.’ The subordinate clause is exactly that — subordinate, giving you that little bit of extra information that’s not quite so important: ‘Most of the time.’ It’s clear what this means: He liked Nigella, who cooked pasta better than Delia. Equally, it is clear this next sentence means something else: He liked Nigella, who cooked pasta, better than Delia. Don’t use commas too frequently, but do use them: 1) When you want your reader to pause: ‘Do concentrate on this, please.’ 2) When you want to give emphasis to an adverb: ‘I am saying this, loudly, so that you take it on board.’ 3) When you decide to omit a word to add drama to what you are saying: ‘The night was young, his hopes were high. The dawn had arrived, his hopes were dashed.’ 4) If you are addressing someone by name, put a comma before the name to avoid confusion — such as, ‘I fancy your sister, Basil.’
Lose the comma and apparently you have the hots for an Italian nun: ‘I fancy your Sister Basil.
SEMI-COLONS
THIS won’t take long; it’s important, believe me.
Read that last sentence out loud and you should see exactly what the semi-colon is doing. It’s providing a pause that is longer and more significant than a comma, and less abrupt and intrusive than a full stop.
For those who relish nuance in their punctuation it’s the go-to punctuation mark. I love the semicolon; for my money, it’s undervalued and underused.
It should be used between two main clauses that balance each other — or contradict each other — but are too closely linked to be written as separate sentences: I love my wife; she loves me. I love my cat; my dog doesn’t give a damn.
You must use a semi-colon when a comma is replacing a full stop in a quotation, or a quotation is linking two separate sentences: ‘I’m so sorry to have to tell you this,’ he said; ‘your cat has croaked.’
‘Would you like her cremated?’ his assistant inquired; ‘we have a special offer this month.’
Semi-colons come in handy, too, with lists, when a comma alone is not up to the job.
This example shows how poor punctuation can be confusing:
‘At the party we saw a stranger kissing the host, the hostess, the
stepson who appeared as high as a kite and a budgerigar that had escaped from its cage.’
Commas in this instance simply can’t deliver. Surely the stranger wasn’t kissing the entire family? And was the stepson as high as both a kite and a budgerigar?
Here, only the much-maligned semi-colon can do the trick: ‘At the party we saw a stranger kissing the host; the hostess; the stepson, who appeared as high as a kite; and a budgerigar that had escaped from its cage.’
COLONS
THINK of it as a pair of binoculars placed vertically on the table. The binoculars will remind you of the colon’s core purpose. It is there to help you look ahead.
The colon does not separate or stop (like the comma, semi-colon, or full stop): it introduces what lies ahead: it takes you forward.
You use the colon for three principal tasks: 1) To introduce a list: ‘Five people walk into a bar: an Englishman, an Irishman, a Scotsman, a bishop, and an actress.’ 2) To introduce direct speech: ‘The barman asks: “Is this some kind of a joke?” ’ 3) To introduce an explanation or summary of the first part of the sentence or to take it further in some way: ‘There are two problems with this joke: it is teetering on the edge of political incorrectness and it isn’t funny.’
APOSTROPHES
ACCORDING to every public opinion survey, the misplaced apostrophe — and the missing apostrophe — are the two linguistic horrors that distress most of us the most.
Look around as you walk down any street and they hit you in the face like a series of Smokin’ Joe Frazier’s left hooks. They’re unbearable — and everywhere.
Incredibly, not everyone feels the same way. I once met Dr John Wells, an Emeritus Professor of Phonetics who maintains the apostrophe is ‘a waste of time’.
George Bernard Shaw (a fellow vegetarian and, in so many ways, a great man) described apostrophes as ‘uncouth bacilli’.
I beg to differ. As Mr Russell, the head of English at the Park School of Baltimore (where I taught during my gap year in the Sixties), used to say: ‘Without the apostrophe, how are you going to tell the difference between feeling your nuts and feeling you’re nuts?’ The apostrophe has two jobs: 1) It is there to show possession — to indicate that a thing or a person belongs or relates to someone or something. ‘Possession is a novel by A.S. Byatt: yes, Possession is A.S. Byatt’s novel.’ Note the possessive apostrophe.
2) It is there to show omission — to indicate that letters are missing. ‘Possession is her bestknown novel: yes, it’s her bestknown one.’
Note the apostrophe, showing that a letter has been omitted from ‘it is.’
The misplaced apostrophe is sometimes called the ‘grocer’s apostrophe’ because of the frequency with which it is seen onsigns in shops advertising ‘Potato’ s ’,‘ Tomato’ s ’, and‘ Runner bean’s’.
To me, quite as annoying as the misplaced apostrophe is the missing apostrophe.
At the 2018 Oscars’ ceremony in Los Angeles, Emma Watson, the actress, star of the Harry Potter films, and English Literature graduate of Brown University, wanted to signal her support for the post-Weinstein #MeToo Time’s Up campaign to end sexual harassment in the movie industry.
She chose to do so by sporting a sizeable tattoo on the inside of her left arm. Unfortunately, it read ‘Times Up’ — without an apostrophe.
O HAVE You Eaten Grandma? by Gyles Brandreth is published by Michael Joseph, and is available from all good bookshops priced €13.99).