Currently Re-Reading: Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss

Thursday, March 20, 2008









An Excerpt from the Introduction:

Either this will ring bells for you, or it won’t. A printed banner has appeared on the concourse of a petrol station near to where I live. “Come inside,” it says, “for CD’s, VIDEO’s, DVD’s, and BOOK’s.”










If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once. … For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural world “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated. First there is shock. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker. (Bethabee note: This is so true!)

Part of one’s despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else – yet we see it all the time. No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to “get a life” by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves.
...

I love this book. Go buy a copy (and, while you're at it, learn how to use an apostrophe)!

3 comments:

Beth said...

A (kind of long) comment for Ashley (since I know one's coming from her):

"The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning. ...

Every language expert... has accepted that it's a mistake to attempt to "embalm the language." Of course it must change and adapt. ...

...I want us to end up [between two positions]: staunch because we understand the advantages of being staunch; flexible because we understand the rational and historical necessity to be flexible. ...[I]n some matters of punctuation there are simple rights and wrongs; in others, one must aptly a good ear to good sense."

From the pen of Lynne herself ;)

Love you; mean it!

Anonymous said...

One point for Beth.

You have officially left me with no straws to grasp at.

(Preposition positioned just for you.)

Joseph G Martin said...

Beth, how do you have patient to get all those pictures in your blog...so so impressed. It will never happen in mine I don't think
Anyways, I have another blog...for your enjoyment sake at work.

Peace

Joseph

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