Thu, 28 Apr 2005
I read Eats,
Shoots & Leaves last weekend. I suspect that it's one of the few books on
the reference/humour shelf at the bookstore. It's a book about punctuation.
Remarkably, it was a best seller in Britain and has received a number of good
reviews. The author, Lynne Truss, rants about poor use of punctuation by
shopkeepers (and, based on the number of times she complains about
greengrocers, she must live in the vegetable capital of the UK), gives some
history about how various punctuation marks came into being, and gives some
tips on how to use them correctly.
I found some comfort in learning that nobody agrees on the proper use of
commas, and, so, I will use them aggressively, as I see fit. I will also try
to incorporate more colons and semicolons into my writing; a key that was, up
until now, largely reserved for writing code will be set free. I was also
happy to learn that British authors, like any programmer, know that it's proper
for trailing punctuation to appear without quotation marks.
One bit of punctuation that I would like to bring back is two spaces after a
period (full stop). I learned it in typing class in high school, and didn't
realize that it doesn't exist in books until Ms. Truss pointed it out.
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