Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The
Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Lynne Truss לקטלוג |
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Everyone knows the basics
of punctuation, surely? Aren't we all taught at school how to use full stops,
commas and question marks? And yet we see ignorance and indifference
everywhere. "Its Summer!" says a sign that cries out for an
apostrophe. "ANTIQUE,S," says another,
bizarrely. "Pansy's ready," we learn to our considerable interest
("Is she?"), as we browse among the bedding plants. In Eats, Shoots
& Leaves, Lynne Truss dares to say that, with our systems of
punctuation patently endangered, it is time to look at our commas and
semicolons and see them for the wonderful and necessary things they are. If
there are only pedants left who care, then, so be it. "Sticklers
unite" is her rallying cry. "You have nothing to lose but your
sense of proportion - and arguably you didn't have much of that to begin
with." This is a book for people
who love punctuation and get upset about it. From the invention of the
question mark in the time of Charlemagne to Sir Roger Casement "hanged
on a comma"; from George Orwell shunning the semicolon to Peter Cook
saying Nevile Shute's
three dots made him feel "all funny", this book makes a powerful
case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much
too subtle to be mucked about with. |
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