Now that things have quietened down a bit, I'd just like to throw in some comments about Lynne Truss's book
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, which was mentioned in another topic (that subsequently went haywire).
I got the impression that presenting the book as a tirade against bad punctuation was a bit of a publisher's ploy to get people interested in a book about punctuation. The bulk of the book tells the history of each punctuation mark, in which it is made obvious that people's ideas of correct punctuation have changed dramatically over the centuries, and that many of the usages considered correct today were decried as ignorant mistakes in the past. (As is often the case with spellings and meanings of words too.) The indignation about sloppy punctuation seems to have been tacked on, as an afterthought.
Having said that, I must admit that my hackles rise when I see apostrophes wrongly used. But Lynne Truss's fixation with this issue would have been more effective if she had managed to collect a lot of examples of apostrophe misuse by well-known authors and respected publications, rather than picking on the hapless shopkeeper. (I find I'm not so bothered by apostrophes being left out as by them being wrongly inserted. Some writers have suggested that text messaging is hastening the complete disappearance of the apostrophe, which wouldn't cause any problems of comprehension in most cases.)
And, while some punctuation issues are clear-cut, others are debatable. Some reviewers have claimed that the book is full of errors itself (for example
the New Yorker's review). And shouldn't that be "zero-tolerance approach"?
(I've also commented on the book's title
on the Ozlip site.)
