Reviews
The author makes a stink about being accurate with punctuation, even in the case when for a proper name it is used incorrectly. Yet throughout her intro she makes a huge error when talking about the Warner studio. They are not (and have never been) Warner Brothers studios. They are Warner Bros. and always have been. If this book weren't a ring and a signed copy, I'd go through and correct all her gross mistakes. Take a look at the Warner Bros.' site: http://www2.warnerbros.com/ I just wish she left the American grammar alone. She's only right about half the time. It is clearly a foreign subject to her (as British grammar would be to me). For instance, when she is discussing quotation marks (inverted commas) she mistakenly says that the punctuation always goes before the closing quote for Americans: this is false! I work with quotation marks of both varieties (inverted commas, aka single quotes, and regular quotation marks) and the rule here is the same over there: if the punctuation has to do with the whole sentence, it goes outside the quotes, if the punctuation is for the quote, it goes inside the quotes. While there were some interesting points in each chapter, the chapters seemed very long and dry for such a short book. The author is much funnier when speaking about her book (I've heard her on the radio numerous times) than her actual book is.
Lynne Truss illuminates the history and contemporary conventions of punctuation with humor and wit. She is quite British, so you'll need to appreciate the British sense of humor (and the nuances of British versus American punctuation) to really appreciate this book. I flagged multiple passages to use in writing instruction. I highly recommend this to anyone who is a word, reading, and writing nerd like me.
The book is good, the information provided clear although a bit...unnecessary, at least to me. Given that English is my second language, I spent a lot of time studying grammar, punctuation and all that stuff; a list of uses of punctuation is something I've seen and studied before. The author's voice is the worse problem in my opinion: apart from the horrific mentality toward the internet as the terminator of punctuation (i hope she's happy emoticons aren't that much in use anymore) and the continuous repetition of certain statements, the self-glorifying voice in which she writes sometimes diverts the topic completely. The self-important tone also becomes unbearable at some point and I can't understand how people don't notice it/can read through it without getting pissed off.
As an English teacher, I thought I would love this book, but instead, I had to force myself to finish it.
I loved this book way too much it's embarrassing. It was such a funny way to brush up on grammar; it didn't even feel like a lesson.
My dear fellow sticklers, please be kind and try not to judge my use of punctuation too harshly! What a fun, instructive little book this is! If only school books were this amusing and entertaining, I'm sure children would appreciate "boring" subjects such as punctuation and grammar much more. This really is a terrific little book: I enjoyed the author's sense of humour very much and found myself laughing out loud several times as I read. Even though I found all chapters equally fun and interesting, I think the one I enjoyed most is the one about the apostrophe and its many misuses. I learned many things about the proper use of punctuation in this book but what surprised me most is the difference between the hyphen and the dash, which I had no idea existed. I knew about the dash of course, but didn't really know what the hyphen was or what it was used for. What actually surprised me is that they are considered two very different things in English, whereas in French we use the same word ("tiret") and punctuation sign for both. A great read!
Original and Extremely Super Crappy Review™ here.
An easy to read book about the importance of getting punctuation right. I'm not sure how much someone who does not care about punctuation as much as I do would like this book, but I liked it just fine. Not only does Truss explain why the right punctuation is necessary through funny examples, she also shows how punctuation is powerful. Then she explains some of the concepts and rules of punctuation, in the mean time explaining why a comma can make a sentence better or worse. She's witty, but sometimes it gets annoying.
Quirky, witty, funny and very very useful. Had fun reading this one!
