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Usenet Posted 21 years ago
Usage
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
I've just come across the above-named volume by Lynne Truss:
ISBN 1 86197 6127
It's a lot of fun, and definitely the kind of book for the people who lurk in usage newsgroups. It's endorsed at the front with the claim that striking Bolshevik printers precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1905 by demanding the same rate for punctuation marks as other characters.
Truss's affirms her love of punctuation by recourse to a story she tells of listening to a radio program in the UK called "Many a Slip" in which "erudite and amusing contestants spotted grammatical errors in pieces of prose." Apparently, on cue, one of the contestants would interrupt to deleivery to call "tautology".
I imagine some of them are participants in these newsgroups. Is that true?
Concerned principally with punctuation, Truss starts off declaring herself a "stickler" for punctuation rules, but acknowledges that the rules have been in a continual state of flux.
Her tone is light hearted as she vacillates between being pedantic obssession and self-reproach. She does draw attention in the course of her excursions into some features of punctuation that I found curious.
Apparently, rules attaching to the possessive apostrophe are even more complex than I'd supposed. One of the rules requires that a distinction be made on the basis of when the person lived. Truss asserts that Archimedes demands no apostrophe for his ideas, while Keats gets gets one for his verse, ostensibly because Archimedes was from the "ancient" world. I assume the frontier is the conventional one the fall of Rome although Truss leaves it vague. So, to punctuate correctly, one needs a fairly precise historical knowledge.
This however is not really a reference guide. It's a bit of fun. truss quotes the following on commas:
A cat has claws at the ends of its paws.
A commas's a pause at the end of a clause.
I must remember that.
Apparently it's the case that the possessive apostrophe was initially a contraction. Thus, Henry's wives was initially:
Henry his wives
Truss points out that if the contraction rule were consistent, then Elizabeth her troops, would have to be:
Elizabeth'r troops.
ISBN 1 86197 6127
It's a lot of fun, and definitely the kind of book for the people who lurk in usage newsgroups. It's endorsed at the front with the claim that striking Bolshevik printers precipitated the Russian Revolution of 1905 by demanding the same rate for punctuation marks as other characters.
Truss's affirms her love of punctuation by recourse to a story she tells of listening to a radio program in the UK called "Many a Slip" in which "erudite and amusing contestants spotted grammatical errors in pieces of prose." Apparently, on cue, one of the contestants would interrupt to deleivery to call "tautology".
I imagine some of them are participants in these newsgroups. Is that true?
Concerned principally with punctuation, Truss starts off declaring herself a "stickler" for punctuation rules, but acknowledges that the rules have been in a continual state of flux.
Her tone is light hearted as she vacillates between being pedantic obssession and self-reproach. She does draw attention in the course of her excursions into some features of punctuation that I found curious.
Apparently, rules attaching to the possessive apostrophe are even more complex than I'd supposed. One of the rules requires that a distinction be made on the basis of when the person lived. Truss asserts that Archimedes demands no apostrophe for his ideas, while Keats gets gets one for his verse, ostensibly because Archimedes was from the "ancient" world. I assume the frontier is the conventional one the fall of Rome although Truss leaves it vague. So, to punctuate correctly, one needs a fairly precise historical knowledge.
This however is not really a reference guide. It's a bit of fun. truss quotes the following on commas:
A cat has claws at the ends of its paws.
A commas's a pause at the end of a clause.
I must remember that.
Apparently it's the case that the possessive apostrophe was initially a contraction. Thus, Henry's wives was initially:
Henry his wives
Truss points out that if the contraction rule were consistent, then Elizabeth her troops, would have to be:
Elizabeth'r troops.
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