Can I change your mind?

What's wrong with this sentence?

Here's a sentence written recently by one of my favourite political columnists:

"The left too has a heritage it may have forgotten, a libertarian, anti-statist tradition dating back to the 19th century."

And I'll answer the question above straight away: I don't think there's anything wrong with it. But, if I'd written it, I would probably have punctuated it a bit differently. (Commas on either side of "too" and a semi-colon after "forgotten", since you ask.)

My point? That, despite what disciples of St Lynne of the Truss may tell us, punctuation is very largely a matter of taste and judgement. Did I stumble over the writer's meaning because he failed to use the same dots and squiggles as I would have done? Not for a second. Would the sentence be any easier to read punctuated my way? Almost certainly not.

For persuasive writers, the only cast iron rule - to be enforced with "zero tolerance" - is that every mark we make on the page or screen must make it more rather than less likely that the reader will be won round to our point of view.

Labels: punctuation

posted by Lindsay @ 11:33 am