“Just look at those glamourous punctuation marks twirling in the lights from the glitter-ball: are they not beautiful? Are they not graceful?” Commas In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Truss hails punctuation as art. Lynne Truss gathers us together in a common bond over the necessity to be understood and exclaiming the proper use of the tools given us to do so. It’s a solitary charge of safekeeping at its best: one that comes with little to no accolade, and in which suggestion is often daftly swept under a dusty rug. I, myself, am a proud Stickler too… a self-proclaimed grammar enthusiast, punctuation perambulator, and word nerd all rolled into one. And, needless to say, plenty of memes are downright too grammatically embarrassing to share. Advertisements and shop signs are littered with punctuational and literary blunders of all types: CD’s for Sale, Bobs’ Motor Shop (or heaven’s sake, even worse: Bob,s Motor Shop), Maw and Paws Swing’s, Open New Years Day, A Better Amercia, and on and on. Daily, we are faced with emails (casual or business) that break every form of grammatical conformity. In the world of grammar and language, perhaps none is quite misunderstood-and misused and abused-as punctuation. “To the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution” – Eats, Shoots & Leaves dedication
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