Status Updates From Eats Shoots & Leaves

One of my creative writing professors recommended this book a few years ago, and I wish I would’ve gotten around to reading it sooner. I didn’t expect an analysis of grammar rules to be so entertaining, but I am actively cackling on the subway as I read this. Genuinely may be my best read of 2026 so far.

“…If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.”

“We have a language that if full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and allusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.”

“…Forget the idea of selecting the right words in the right order and channeling the reader’s attention by means of artful pointing. Just add the right emoticon to your email and everyone will know what self-expressive effect you thought you kind-of had in mind.”

“…the emoticon being the greatest (or the most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne…”

“I know that language moves on. It has to. Not once have I ever stopped to feel sorry for those Egyptian hieroglyph artists tossed on the scrapheap during a former linguistic transition…But I can’t help feeling that our punctuation system, which has served the written word with grace and ingenuity for centuries, must not be allowed to disappear without a fight.”

“…and whose bloody automatic ‘grammar checker’ can’t tell the difference either.”

“Even in the knowledge that our punctuation has arrived at its present state by a series of accidents; even in the knowledge that there are at least seventeen rules for the comma, some of which are beyond explanation by top grammarians — it is a matter for despair to see punctuation chucked out as worthless by people who don’t know the difference between who’s and whose…”

“Having said all this, there is no immediate cause for panic. If the book is dying, then at least it is treating its loyal fans (and the bookshops) to an extravagant and extended swan song.”

“Electronic media are intrinsically ephemeral, are open to perpetual revision, and work quite strenuously against any sort of historical perception. The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value.”

“…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 you visit, and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied. Scrolling documents is the opposite of reading: your eyes remain static, while the material flows past.“

“…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.“

“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 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.”

“…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.“

“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 ascendency of printing to survive.“

“…On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune.”

“More than any other mark, the comma draws our attention to the mixed origins of modern punctuation, and its consequent mingling of two quite distinct functions:
1 To illuminate the grammar of a sentence
2 To point up — rather in the manner of musical notation — such literary qualities as rhythm, direction, pitch, tone and flow”