I'm a stickler, alright. I cringe every time when I see mistakes which shouldn't appear anywhere, since here punctuation and grammar are being taught in primary school. But it looks like every language has its own tormentors.

Beside being extremely informative, it is in equal measure hilarious. What is it with these books on punctuation that makes them so unputdownable? I've read not long ago Semicolon: The Past, Present, and Future of a Misunderstood Mark, and I loved it. Now this one is even more captivanting. Here are some fragments:

I mean, full stops are quite important, aren't they? Yet by contrast to the versatile apostrophe, they are stolid little chaps, to say the least. In fact one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burnout from all the thankless effort.

Punctuation developed slowly and cautiously not because it wasn't considered important, but, on the contrary, because it was such intensely powerful ju-ju.

Everyone knows the exclamation mark - or exclamation point, as it is known in America. It comes at the end of a sentence, is unignorable and hopelessly heavy-handed, and is known in the newspaper world as a screamer, a gasper, a startler or (sorry) a dog's cock.

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

The name comes from the Greek, as usual. What a lot of words the Greeks had for explaining spatial relationships - for placing round, placing underneath, joining together, cutting off! Lucky for us, otherwise we would have had to call our punctuation marks names like "joiner" and "half a dash" and so on. In this case, the phrase from which we derive the name hyphen means "under one" or "into one" or "together", so is possibly rather more sexy in its origins than we might otherwise have imagined from its utilitarian image today.

Recommended to everyone, I've seen a lot of reviews which could benefit from it. (Mine too, unfortunately...)

Delightful book. Have enlisted for the corps.

Consider: “Using the comma well announces that you have an ear for sense and rhythm, confidence in your style and a proper respect for your reader, but it does not mark you out as a master of your craft. But colons and semicolons—well, they are in a different league, my dear! They give such lift!” author Truss writes. “The humble comma can keep the sentence aloft all right, like this, UP, for hours if necessary, UP, like this, UP, sort- of bouncing, and then falling down, and then UP it goes again.”

+++

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A panda walks into a café. No, wait. He goes to, um, uh, Niagara Falls. Yeah, that’s it. And this panda walks directly up to the edge of the rushing water, where he allows himself to plummet over the side to the churning froth below, wildly gesticulating with his arms all the way down. The tragic suicide was a complete mystery to the panda’s family until his wife came across a badly punctuated travel brochure in her husband’s personal effects that said, “A visitor to Niagara sees, falls, and waves.”


From:
The Comma Denominator:
Good News: No One Knows How to Use These Things (by another of the grammar corps)

This book was a waste of my time. Think of an old guy yelling at a bunch of kids to get off his lawn. Then put that sentence in really good grammar, and that is this book.

It's overwhelmingly pretentious. As far as I am concerned, it generally ignores the way language moves to apparent regression when in fact it is merely changing, as it always does.

I confess: I frequently find myself self-conscious about my use of punctuation. A few years back, I even bought a copy of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, but have yet to read more than a chapter or two at a time before discovering something else to do, even if it’s bathing the dog. Similarly, I procrastinated on reading Eats Shoots & Leaves, and I really shouldn’t have. Full of humor and information, it explains some of the easier nuances to punctuation in a useful and engaging manner.

“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… Punctuation directs you how to read, in the way musical notation directs a musician how to play.“

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Surprisingly, the rest of my review is actually on topic. But full review will join its friends in the uncensored realms of wordpress.

https://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/...

I must really be a punctuation nerd if I read this while on vacation. But I trekked it with me to the beach and loved it. It reminded me of the early years just after college when I wasn't afraid to plunk down a semicolon--until those sniping newspaper editors cleared me of that habit. Now I'm inspired to bring back the lovely semicolon and think a little bit before using the dreaded dash. I highly recommend this book.

Commas? Aren't commas a dot with a dash on the end that signify when to breathe while reading? And apostrophe's? They always' sit around esses?

I never really understood why a colon is either semi or full - I would have thought it was either empty or extracting. Hmmmm.

I suppose this book will underscore my confusion, hyphen-ate my prose, and dash it all, deliver me from symbolism.

TTFN.

I've never felt more anxious about writing a review; I feel like I've been abusing punctuation, even though I didn't mean to. Sorry!

If punctuation is the stitching of language, language comes apart, obviously, and all the buttons fall off.

This was an informative read. Lynne Truss approached the subject with humour and intelligence. She gave an example of how crucial the placement of the comma is by reiterating what Cecil Hartley pointed out in 1818:

... consider the difference between the following:

"Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

and:

"Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise."

Now, huge doctrinal differences hang on the placing of this comma. The first version, which is how Protestants interpret the passage, lightly skips over the whole unpleasant business of Purgatory and takes the crucified thief straight to heaven with Our Lord. The second promises Paradise at some later date (to be confirmed, as it were) and leaves Purgatory nicely in the picture for the Catholics, who believe in it. Similarly, it is argued that the Authorised Version of the Bible (and by extension Handel's Messiah) misleads on the true interpretation... Again, consider the difference:

"The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord."

and:

"The voice of him that crieth: In the wilderness prepare ye the way of the Lord."

Also:

"Comfort ye my people"
(please go out and comfort my people)

and

"Comfort ye, my people"
(just cheer up, you lot; it might never happen)

I apologize for this lengthy review, but I really wanted to share all of that because it blew me away. All because of a comma! Makes you think.

All in all, I'm glad I read this. I do wish, however, that there would have been more examples of the correct and incorrect use of punctuation in sentences. Still, I'd recommend it!

I have, for some reason, frequently been recommended Lynne Truss's book, though the reason escapes me; friends who have been exposed to my academic writing style are particularly prone to do so, and I have grown used to this strange phenomenon. I'm sure it says more about them - poor, unenlightened souls - than it does about me; for some reason, in particular, very few people understand what a wonderful punctuation mark the semi-colon is, and that it can, and very often should, be used to replace the period. Though there is also, of course, much to recommend the humble comma: the average sentence (not that I wish to imply that a sentence should content itself with merely being average) could be much improved by the addition of one or two, possibly more, of these handy little beasts.

No, I simply can't understand it; I suppose that a careful reading of Eats, Shoots and Leaves could, if I really tried, help me make my sentences a little longer, and assist me in festooning them with additional, glorious, punctuation. But why gild the lily?

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(based on a conversation earlier this morning with Jordan; apologies to Bob Dylan)

Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
I'm not sleepy; and there ain't no place I'm going to;
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come, followin' you.

Though I know that evenin's empire has returned into sand;
Vanished from my hand;
Left me blindly here, to stand, but still not sleeping;
My weariness amazes me; I'm branded on my feet;
I have no one to meet;
And the ancient, empty street's too dead for dreaming.

Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
I'm not sleepy; and there ain't no place I'm going to;
Hey, Mr Semi-Colon Man: play a song for me!
In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come, followin' you.

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Seen yesterday in the window of a Geneva art gallery, this 1927 painting by Jean Arp entitled Point-Virgule ("semi-colon"):



I wanted to buy it on the spot. Unfortunately, a) the gallery was closed, b) a little internet research revealed that it last went for around 900,000 euros.

Damn. But still, if you feel like giving me a really expensive surprise present you'll now know what to do.
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From Pico Iyer's essay In Praise of the Humble Comma:

A comma... catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

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Spotted earlier this morning by notgettingenough in an article about Waterstones (formerly Waterstone's). I would have contributed.


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From today's Independent:


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From following day's Independent:

3.5⭐️The book introduced me to different uses of punctuation marks—specifically, commas and colons (that were discussed elaborately). I would recommend the Merriam Webster’s punctuation guide over this book as the former gets straight to the point. Although I am a huge language lover, the history of punctuation marks in the first parts didn’t appeal to me particularly because of the redundancy. But I must say that I liked the interesting usage examples in the book. I would recommend this book if you’re curious about punctuation marks.

Despite occasional impropriety, it’s entertaining as all get out. Truss masterfully and cleverly communicates the meaning of a comma, the sense of a semicolon, and the personality of a period, to the mind of an English speaker. It’s a chance to laugh at our language — and love it.

Despite this being a topic that I can be quite pedantic about, especially in light of my job, my thoughts can be best summarised by this 'Anon' review on US Amazon: "I really did want to like this book. However, first of all, it's mean spirited. I'm a stickler, and I'm comfortable with that. But I do not need to see those who are not sticklers put down and repeatedly called illiterate in order to feel better about myself."

Similar to the recent best selling junior doctor book in the UK, This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor, it's essentially a person from a privileged background harsly judging others for their lack of opportunity and/or education which in turn impacted on how they were educated. 6 out 12.

2004 read

Manages to make instruction on writing guidelines fun