A Lesson in Commas
Regular readers of my website will be aware that I have something of a love-hate relationship with Raymond E. Feist. His early works inspired me to start writing, while his later works have left me wondering just where it all went wrong. His latest book At the Gates of Darkness certain falls in the latter of the two camps I’m afraid to say, and its editing is just so poor in places I felt compelled to write a blog.
Sticklers for grammar will no doubt have heard of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves — a book inspired by poor punctuation in a nature article that describes how a panda ‘eats, shoots and leaves’ (i.e. the panda is armed and dangerous!) The lesson to be taken from this example is that a wrongly placed comma can completely change the meaning of a piece of a text. Indeed a poorly used comma is just as bad as a poor use of capitalisation, or that greatest of sins, the badly used apostrophe.
And so it was that my mind was drawn back to Truss’s Eats, Shoots and Leaves as I came to the final page of Feist’s latest paperback. I have reproduced the last three lines exactly as they appear in the text:
‘You’re certain there will be one?’ asked Sandreena.
‘As certain as I am of anything,’ said Pug.
The conversation ceased leaving them in silence.
Spotted the mistake? The conversation ceased leaving them in silence. Conversations, by their very nature, don’t leave their participants in silence. Without a comma, the line is a contradiction that leaves the reader feeling confused. What the line should say of course is: ‘The conversation ceased, leaving them in silence’. Without the comma, the whole effect of the last few paragraphs is lost — the ending simply loses its power and the cliff-hanger is no more.
Such is the impact of this one missing comma, it makes me wonder how no one in the Harper Collins team spotted it. In his acknowledgements page at the start of the book, Feist thanks his four editors, stating ‘rarely does an author get one good editor, let alone four.’ I have to wonder then, is this a case of ‘too many cooks’?
Either way it seems Feist still can’t quite bring his fantasy to an end and I am left once more with the dilemma: do I buy his next book? Given just how much I’ve invested in the series, I am almost duty-bound to follow Feist to the bitter end. I just hope the ending’s worth it…
Until next time,
M.J.Ryder
