Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

One would perhaps be led to believe via my reading selections that I'm a much smarter and more intellectual person than I really am. Must be because I'm not otherwise doing anything really using my brain this semester, otherwise you'd see a preponderance of chick lit.

Anyway, I actually like studying the rules of grammar, as sad as that sounds. Remember diagramming? Gosh, I really liked doing it. It was just nice, how every word had its proper place.

Along with grammar comes punctuation. Where do you properly put periods, commas, apostrophe marks and the like? I admit that I'm not as good with punctuation as I should be, since I have the tendency to create really long run-on sentences, and then I get confused where commas should and shouldn't go, so perhaps I shouldn't be the person talking about this. But that's why I picked up Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss, over the weekend. After all, as the cover proudly proclaims, it is "The Runaway #1 British Bestseller".

It is a very useful book, and it takes you through the proper usage of the apostrophe, comma, semi-colon, colon, dash and hyphens. It tells you when and how they should be used, their proper placement, etcetera. And it does so in a more colloquial manner than most grammar/punctuation texts, as Truss punctuates explanations with personal opinions and examples, making it marginally enjoying.

But the real reason I could barely get through the book? Dear lord, the author was obviously a vastly unpopular young adult, and decided to get her own back by becoming a "punctuation vigilante" (p34). For example:

While other girls were out with boyfriends on Sunday afternoons, getting their necks disfigured by love bites, I was at home with the wireless listening to an Ian Messiter quiz called Many a Slip, in which erudite and amusing contestants spotted grammatical errors in pieces of prose. It was a fantastic programme... Around this same time, when other girls of my age were attending the Isle of Wight Festival and having abortions, I bought a copy of Eric Partiridge's Usage and Abusage and covered it in sticky-backed plastic so that it would last a lifetime (it has). (p15-6)

Now, it is very admirable that she loved grammar so, but there is such a thing as balance. Perhaps she could have been getting love bites while listening to Many a Slip! To each her own, Ms. Truss. Don't be bitter over the fact that you were an unpopular little chit and found solace in grammar. You can now rub it in the faces of those peers of yours who are certainly little skanky whores and who now live in trailer parks!

And I found that her manner of writing was, to use one of the author's favourite words when she was little, desultory. So full of righteous indignition! I admit that poor punctuation is indeed grating and can vastly change the tone and meaning of a sentence if not used properly, but I don't necessarily recommend, as she does, walking around with a bottle of White-out and a Sharpie to correct all those errors. You just become annoying, after a point. Just wince, and move on.

If it "hurts like hell" (p183), these vast injustices to the English language, take a couple of advil and go to bed, sweetie. If you can get past this tone to the book, then it's quite interesting after all.