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Fri 30 Jan, 2004 05:03 pm
Some years ago a wonderful little book on English grammar came out called "Woe is I". Now, I have come across one by Lynn Truss,called "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves", all about punctuation. The author immediately goes on the attack against people who misuse apostrophes, and she won me totally, right there. I haven't gone further yet, because I suspect this is one of those books that should be rationed, and not swallowed all at a gulp.
My personal rage is roused by the ommission of commas, and the confusion with apostrophes. These two carelessnesses are enough to drive me up the wall. And there are more of them every day.
I don't think it's available in the US yet, unfortunately. I got it from Amazon uk.
Re: Punctuation made entertaining
Tomkitten wrote: And there are more of them every day.
You don't have a problem with incomplete sentences?
Very seldomly does a sentence start with "And". Maybe you should practice more with your comma's.
What the hell am I talkin about, I know nothing about punctuation. Comma's are
Punctuation
It seems that starting a sentence with "And" used to be perfecctly acceptable. I don't know when that changed, but I wondered when I wrote it, if anyone would comment.
There is a series about grammar and puntuation that I liked. The books are called The Well-Tempered Sentence (punctuation), The Transitive Vampire (grammar), and the newer Disheveled Dictionary "...is about the music of speech and the sound and sensuality of language...." All by Karen Elizabeth Gordon
Turning on email updates so I can check some of these books out. It's a tough subject to make interesting. Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" is a good read, by the way.
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