March 2006
Not Just for Decoration
by Robert C. Cumbow
These occasional columns of mine have become such a fixture that it now seems as if they've been going on forever. But it was only a couple of years ago that the first one appeared. It was triggered by a particularly frustrating round of paper-grading, when I became acutely aware that many third-year law students still make fundamental errors in their writing — errors that, at one time at least, any sixth-grader could have noticed and corrected. One of the errors I emphasized in that first column was the misuse of the apostrophe, particularly in plurals and in the confusion of "its" and "it's."
Except for that brief sortie, I have avoided the topic of punctuation. That's because, not long after I got started on this series of articles, Lynne Truss presented us with Eats, Shoots & Leaves, her delightful, curmudgeonly look at English punctuation that unaccountably became an international bestseller. Ms Truss has occupied the field, as far as I'm concerned, and I have little to say on the subject of punctuation that she hasn't already covered. The best I can do is commend her book to those of you who have not yet read it.
However, I did say I have "little to say," not "nothing to say."
I start with a bit of forgotten antiquity. You may have noticed that I just referred to Lynne Truss as "Ms Truss." You may have wondered why I didn't put a period after the "Ms" title. It's because I'm old-fashioned. I haven't run into many people who actually remember this, but when the term "Ms" first appeared it was used without a period. The reasoning was this: The terms "Mr." and "Mrs." are followed by periods because they are abbreviations; the period, as in all abbreviations, denotes that some material has been removed — namely the letters that make up the full words "Mister" and "Mistress." ("Mrs." had, of course, come to be pronounced "missuz" rather than "mistress" long before the term "mistress" acquired an objectionable meaning; but the "r" is still there in "Mrs." to remind us of its original meaning and pronunciation.)
The word "Ms" was introduced not as an abbreviation for the term "Miss" but as an alternative form of address designed to eliminate both "Mrs." and "Miss." The reasoning was perfectly sensible: We don't use different forms of address for men based on whether they are married or not, so why should we do so for women? So "Ms" (pronounced "miz") was born — but it was not followed by a period because it was not an abbreviation of anything, and there was no need for a dot to show that letters had been left out. That always made sense to me, which is why I still adhere to it.
Usage guides today, though, will tell you to display "Ms." with a period. I suspect this is based on the dubious theory that a term of address needs to be followed by a period, whether it's an abbreviation or not. Of course, we never use a period after the titles "Doctor" and "Professor" if we spell them out in full. But when we use them as terms of address, we rarely spell them out, so they always appear as abbreviations. People are accustomed to seeing titles that end with periods, so they do so with "Ms" as well, whether it makes sense or not. George Bernard Shaw, who could always be counted on to have a better idea about things linguistic, adopted the opposite approach. He never put a period after any terms of address, using instead "Mr", "Mrs", or "Dr". His idea was that we can tell it's used as a title, we know what it means, and putting a period after it is just a waste of ink.
Dots
You've probably noticed that I've been using the term "period" to identify the dot that follows an abbreviation such as "Mr." The British call it a "full stop," which at first glance seems more cumbersome, but is in fact one syllable shorter than our term. To each his (or her, but not their) own.
Of course in the digital age this mark has come to be known as a "dot" — but only in the context of Internet domain names and URLs (Uniform Resource Locators, which are not the same thing as domain names, but which always include domain names within them, just as e-mail addresses do). In math and accounting, the same mark is referred to as a "decimal point," or "point" for short; but I understand that in those fields many practitioners now use the shorter term "dot."
Three dots, used to indicate that material has been left out, or that a long pause is to be taken, make up what is known as an ellipsis. Two or more of them are ellipses. The proper way to make an ellipsis used to be to separate the three dots with spaces; but that was in the old days of manual typewriters and carbon paper. Today, the way you make an ellipsis is three dots right in a row (which some word processors will immediately convert into a single-character ellipsis instead of a three-character string of periods, presumably to save bits). The ellipsis should be preceded and followed by a space, and if it is used at the end of a sentence it should be followed by a space and another single period.
Inside and Outside of Quote Marks
You may also have noticed that, in this column, when following a quoted word with a period or a comma, I have sometimes placed the punctuation mark inside the quote marks, and sometimes outside. There is no absolute English rule on this. The British always put the punctuation on the outside of the quote marks. The default rule in American English is to put it inside unless it would harm the meaning. I've always thought it made a lot (not "alot") of sense to put the punctuation inside the quote marks if it's part of what's being quoted (as in my references to "Mr." above) and outside if it isn't (as in "George Bernard Shaw always wrote 'Mr'.").
When a parenthetical is used as a full separate sentence, the period should go inside the parentheses. (This is an example.) When the material inside the parentheses is a fragment, and the parenthetical appears at the end of a sentence, the period should go outside (like this).
The Serial Comma
Several readers have asked about the so-called serial comma. This is the comma that is (or isn't) used before the last item in a series. We know that we use commas to separate items in a series, so readers will know which terms go together and which are separate, and so that they'll have visual cues as to where to make a small pause when reading (especially aloud). The disputed question is whether (and when) the last element in the series should be preceded by a comma.
Should we say "the good, the bad, and the ugly" or "the good, the bad and the ugly"? One school of thought says that the final comma is unnecessary in this case, because the purpose of a comma is to substitute for the missing word "and," so where you have included the word "and," a comma would be redundant. Thus, by that theory, the phrase "the good, the bad and the ugly" means "the good and the bad and the ugly," while the phrase "the good, the bad, and the ugly" means, nonsensically, "the good and the bad and and the ugly."
Another school of thought, however, says that the comma is not merely a substitute for "and" but also a sign of separation into groups, and we can't so easily dispense with it just because there's an "and" in there. Consider: "Arthur left his estate in equal parts to Gavin, Tristram, and Percival." In this statement, the serial comma has been used before the last element, emphasizing separation, so we must conclude that Arthur's estate was divided into three equal parts, distributed among (not between) the three heirs. The proponent of this use of the serial comma would say that the omission of that final comma would change the meaning of the sentence (and of Arthur's will): "Arthur left his estate in equal parts to Gavin, Tristram and Percival" would (or at least could) be read to mean that Arthur's estate is divided into two parts, one going to Gavin, the other to Tristram and Percival together. You can see how this becomes a more serious problem if no commas at all are used: "Arthur left his estate in equal parts to Gavin and Tristram and Percival," which leaves at least three possibilities for Arthur's legacy: one part to each of the three heirs, one part to the first two together and one to the third, or one part to the first, and one to the second and third together.
So what's the rule? There is none. It all depends on context. As is so often the case with language, the closer you look at supposedly absolute rules, the less justification there is for regarding them as absolute. That's the reason that, in speaking and writing, it always helps to think about the words you have chosen and the way you have presented them. If misinterpretation is likely, or even possible, then it's a good idea to recast your sentence to make it absolutely clear. This is especially true when something as important as the division of Arthur's estate is on the line. It's longer, but better, to say: "Arthur left his estate in two equal parts to Gavin, on the one hand, and to Tristram and Percival on the other."
Diacritics
Before I finish talking about dots, I have to say a word about diacritical marks. Strictly speaking these are not punctuation at all; they are part of the correct spelling of a word — and that's my key point. A diacritic is "a mark, point, or sign attached to a letter to indicate its exact phonetic value, or to distinguish it from another letter." In American English, we don't customarily see diacritics. They are mostly characteristic of foreign languages. However, the fact that we don't use these in English is no excuse for the boorish way in which we, as a society, disregard the proper use of diacritics in foreign terms. Besides, our language is adopting words from other languages all the time, and non-English languages are becoming increasingly common in the United States. It thus behooves us to know a little about diacritics and try to respect them.
As noted in the definition I cited above, the purpose of a diacritic is to distinguish one letter from another. Thus a letter accompanied by a diacritical mark is to be regarded as a different letter. The letter "ñ" is not the same as the letter "n." Crossword puzzle setters have the annoying tendency to ignore the diacritical mark as if it were not a crucial part of the letter or word, but a mere decoration, to be retained or discarded at will. At least once a year I write to the crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times to remind him that "año," not "ano," is the Spanish word for "year," and only a person who didn't know what "ano" is the Spanish word for would put it into a crossword puzzle. At least in a family newspaper.
The uniquely American assumption that diacritical marks are merely decorative, and not seriously related to the proper spelling and pronunciation of a word, has had two results: We don't use them when we should, and we do use them when we shouldn't. Mötley Crüe and Häagen-Dazs are examples of the latter. They represent "decorative" uses of the German or Swedish mark known as an umlaut.1 Such uses not only have nothing to do with the proper pronunciation or spelling of the word, but actually render the word unpronounceable and meaningless. A reader recently reminded me of the umlaut over the "n" in "Spinal Tap"; that one's excusable, though, because it's part of the very attitude that This Is Spinal Tap lampoons. (Besides, I can't write about it because there's no standard ASCII character code for an n-umlaut.)
So what's a person to do if she doesn't know those ASCII codes? The "insert: symbol" menu in most word processors enables you to insert an uncommon letter such as ñ or è or ü in its proper form. For some letters there are short cuts. For example, the umlaut in German words may be indicated by placing the letter "e" after the vowel affected (Loewenbraeu for Löwenbräu, which, by the way, is not pronounced anything like "lowen-brow"). This simple solution is commonly ignored, with embarrassing (and sometimes insulting) results. Every time I see a reference to a "Mobius strip," I think of poor August Ferdinand Möbius (or Moebius) in his grave, rolling over … and over … and over … .
Robert C. Cumbow is a shareholder with Graham & Dunn, Seattle, where he counsels clients in the technology, beverage, food, communications, entertainment, and other industries on trademark, copyright, and advertising issues. He is a past chair of the WSBA Intellectual Property Section and the Editorial Advisory Board, and is currently a board member of Washington Lawyers for the Arts. He teaches at Seattle University School of Law and writes on law, language, and film.
NOTES
1. Actually, the umlaut is also found occasionally in English, where it is called a dieresis and is used to indicate that the second vowel in a two-vowel sequence is to be pronounced separately, as in "naïve."
