Nom de Plume

Well, I guess I’m a couple years behind the curve on this one, but I finally picked up a company of Eats Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. I almost ended up not reading it at all after the introduction by Frank McCourt, who really bugs the living daylights out of me. (Oh, sure I devoured Angela’s Ashes like everyone else when it came out, but the subsequent book was full of a brogued whine that was hard to take — “Ach! Poor me, an innocent Irish lad.” I suppose it was well-punctuated though.)

But you know what? Truss is hysterically funny and she illuminates punctuation with grace, ease, and a lot of humor. I’m glad to see that I’m not alone in bemoaning the errant apostrophes of vegetable stands and in shop windows. I’m happy to discover that I am not the only one completely addicted to the semicolon. In other words, I have found my peeps!

She also gives a history of each punctuation mark. When did it first appear? What was it initially used for? Truss answers all these questions, throws in a good many literary references and trivia — and the result is a delightful book. I did have some minor quibbles with some of her preferences; for example, she decries comma overuse while I think she could use a few more. But those are personal preferences and are neither here nor there.