A clarion call to my fellow grammarians

[hel_ana]

For all who were horrified by spuriusfurius' encounter with a moron mother last week, a new champion has arrived. I think I love her.

She is Lynn Truss, the author of a new book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, a "witty eulogy for punctuation".

Why do I love her? How could I not?

"I saw a sign for 'Book's' with an apostrophe in it and something deep inside me snapped," she writes. "Despair was the initial impetus for this book."

"People who don't know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll," she writes.

I really want to have a copy of this book.

Comments

[depotmode.livejournal.com]

Sounds like an answer to an editor's prayer. :)

[hel_ana]

I actually have the coolest grammar book ever.

It's called Grammar Reference Guide, and it's a spiralbound book that's about 12 inches tall and five inches wide. Each section (Grammar, Punctuation/Capitalization, Phonics, Spelling) is a series of cards, each one giving a brief summary of the rule.

It's super keen, and easy to use, and I adore it. I also got it for about four dollars at a remainder sale.

It has a couple of flaws (the section on restrictive clauses is placed in the card explaining comma use in non-restrictive clauses, for example) but in general it's very accessible. And given that most people don't want to think too hard about grammar, accessibility is one of the most important attributes a guide to it can have.

[furrydan.livejournal.com]

That's funny about the apostrophe thing. On a somewhat related note, after so many years doing lots of typesetting it angers me to see so many foot and inch marks used instead of quotes and apostrophes. I don't know grammar very well, but I see lots of other typography errors nowadays. Anyone with a Mac or PC can make type look decent, so the "art" of typography is more-or-less dead. If it wasn't for "smart quotes," and automatic em-dashes most books and magazines you see today would use the wrong symbols exclusively.

The guy who invented the smart quote algorithms is a Traveller RPG fan.

And yes, I know this message is using inch marks, web stuff does not translate quotes between platforms on a dependably.