eclecticism

Another book I need to add to my collection: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

“Eats, Shoots & Leaves” takes its title from a mispunctuated phrase about a panda. In Britain, where this rib-tickling little book has been a huge success and its panda joke apparently recited in the House of Lords, Ms. Truss has proved to be anything but a lone voice. Despite her assertion that “being burned as a witch is not safely enough off the agenda” for the punctuation-minded stickler, Ms. Truss obviously hit a raw nerve. For those who are tired of seeing signs like “Bobs’ Motors” and think an “Eight Items or Less” checkout sign should read “Eight Items or Fewer,” boy, is this book for you.

Ms. Truss has not succeeded solely on the basis of her punctuation acumen (though that is considerable — and by the way, she finds dashes and parentheses annoying). Her mission to “engage in some direct-action argy-bargy” has helped the book, too.

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p>Dashes and parentheses annoy her? Ah, such a shame — given that I’m quite prone to using dashes (as I did earlier in this sentence) and parentheses (like this, for the second time in a single sentence — and another dash, too, just for good measure), I suppose she won’t be much of a fan of my writing style.

(via Mickey)

iTunes: “Mile End” by Pulp from the album Trainspotting (1995, 4:31).

[See also: Parenthetically… | Even startup pranks are harder in Windows | AdSense for Feeds | Links for September 23rd through September 24th | Just what I always wanted! ]

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