From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to Sir Roger Casement "hanged on a comma" from George Orwell shunning the semicolon to Peter Cook saying Nevile Shute's three dots made him feel "all funny", this book makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with. In 2002 Lynne Truss presented Cutting a Dash, a well-received BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation, which led to the writing of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. This is the book for people who love punctuation and get upset about it. "You have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion - and arguably you didn't have much of that to begin with." If there are only pendants left who care, then so be it. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss dares to say that, with our system of punctuation patently endangered, it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them for the wonderful and necessary things they are. "Pansy's ready," we learn to our considerable interest ("Is she?"), as we browse among the bedding plants. "Its Summer!" says a sign that cries out for an apostrophe, "ANTIQUE,S," says another, bizarrely. Everyone knows the basics of punctuation, surely? Aren't we all taught at school how to use full stops, commas and question marks? And yet we see ignorance and indifference everywhere. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss dares to say that, with our system of punctuation patently endangered, it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them for the wonderful and necessary things they are.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |