Eats, Shoots & Leaves ~ Lynne Truss ~ 9/04 ~ B Export

Oh, that old joke is what I thought when I first read the title of this book.

I think I was much more of a stickler about English usage, grammar and punctuation when I was younger than I am now. I was raised by people of English heritage who did not speak what I thought was good English, and I was constantly annoyed by their speech when I was a child. "He don't", "she don't" made me cringe. So did "ain't" and "et". My mother told me early never to say "ain't" and corrected other things I said, but I lived with her only the first seven years of my life. Maybe that's where I contracted sticklerism!

I am more tolerant now, but not about people who misspell words. Why is it so hard to use a dictionary? The first program I bought when I bought my first computer with a modem was Microsoft Reference. It contains a dictionary, encyclopedia, thesaurus and more. That dictionary is available to me on every single web page I access, as well as offline, and I use it throughout the day, every day of every week. Before I owned a computer, a dictionary was by my side every time I read a book and still is.

Many WREX writers pepper their work with commas. They tell me it's because they want to indicate a stop or some kind of emphasis to their readers. I tell them the only purpose those commas have is to interrupt the flow of their writing. These writers also love to use hyphens. They and others online use slashes indiscriminately. To me a slash means and/or and should be used only for that.

I see a reason for the use of emoticons once in a while. It's very difficult to indicate that a comment is a tongue-in-cheek statement when no physical actions can be seen. Acronyms like "LOL" or "CU later" indicate to me that people are too damned lazy, or in too much of a rush, to write the words out. In a rush to do what?

I was taught to use the apostrophe for things like the plural of CD, and it's very hard not to do that today.

There's more, but this is enough for now.

Mal

Maybe those who mispell a word don't know that they need a dictionary!! LOL!

I am a 'comma' user for making better sense of loooooong sentences.

I read the title to mean

He/she eats, then he/she shoots and then he/she leaves the premises.

What do I know?? hahaha! And, isn't that what Panda bear does???

I am the type of person who prefers email above all. I find that I am impulsive in my speech and do much better via email, which more accurately reflects my thought. How glad I often am to be able to erase that initial line and substiute another, more gentle expression. Email also allows me to communicate with more people, just gentle jokes to remind them I am thinking of them. I live a fairly hectic life and email makes it much easier to keep up with friends. I also agree with the very limited use of emoticons, and what a wonderful word that is. See how we progress in good ways as well as bad?

You could be right about spelling. Maybe I'm not typical. I begin doubting the spelling of a word and have to look it up.

There are simple and easy rules about the use of commas, which are easily available on the web, or in this book or others. Better fewer commas than more, I say.

Mal

I first saw Eats, Shoots & Leaves at Border's, lying on one of their tables. I stared at it because I couldn't figure out what the title had to do with or why there were pandas on the dust jacket.

After much staring, I picked up the book and discovered the panda story.

But in the interim, I tried to make sense of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves. I decided that it was some sort of vegetarian cookbook.

Another idea was that it was a sign on a California restaurant that was being Informal (with EATS) and then vegetarian.

I've always been a dictionary-user - and very little rubs me the wrong way as finding a typo or a mis-used word in a book. Like Ms Truss, I read with a pencil nearby and correct misspellings in books (even, to my own horror, in library books).

I have gone almost exclusive to e-mail. We have four daughters, and by sending one e-mail to each of them, I can be sure that each one gets the same information. There's none of this whining that "You didn't tell ME that".

I'm probably use more commas than is absolutely necessary and generally use the "Oxford comma". I loved the description of punctuation as good manners that make things run more smoothly.

Thanks for the welcome, Ginny! I think I tend to use too many exclamation points, but in typing, I want to emphasize my thoughts a lot of times. When I first saw the title, I certainly didn't think it had anything to do with books, but looked in for curiosity.

E-mail is very important to me. My daughter and I correspond in this manner, but I still write a few letters to those who do not have a computer.

Having been a legal secretary for forty years, I have always been conscious of punctuation and you can believe me when I say that when a secretary sees a letter from another office that has a secretary she knows, she pays careful attention to punctuation.

Hi, First saw the book on Waterstones Amazon UK site and when I saw the cover I was intreged since it sure didn't look like a gardening book, which coming from a nation of great gardeners is what I expected. Copied and pasted the title on the US Amazon and it was not yet published in the US - no place on the web site of any bookseller could I find the title - and so I filed it away for the future - and today is the future...!

Yes, I use lots of dashes and exclaimation points since I've been writing on the internet - Never did or still don't when I write on notepaper - but somehow I am trying to be expressive with my e-mail and here on seniornet -

My daughter is the one - she makes up the greatest non-words and uses English symbols for various reactions that really hit the nail each time.

Back tonight after I've had a chance to crack the book.

When I first heard the title of this book, I actually first heard it. Most of you appear to have seen the book before hearing the title. Oops, I almost posted a 'LOL' there to indicate I was having a bit of humor. Instead, I will indicate fully that I just laughed out loud.

I think emoticons are dreadfully overused. However, I don't think that I am being lazy when I use a LOL. My verbosity runneth over without my writing out every word. Shortcuts sometimes reflect the medium and are not always an indication of the amount of time and effort a person is putting into communicating or whatever they are doing. Internet communication is a cross between spoken language and written. Emoticons, as someone else pointed out, add part of the visual cues missing from the message but intended by the medium.

My mother loaned me her copy of the book. When she said the title (the first time I heard it) I thought it referred to pandas' dietary habits. I hoped it would be about the periodic die-offs of bamboo and the remnant genetic diversity of pandas due to these cyclic die-offs of their primary food source.

When I first saw the title of the book on the cover I thought it referred to the English grammar slackers who write all the signs in museums that my mother and I get such a chuckle out of.

I was delighted to find the book to be a humorous look at punctuation, something I'm not too adept at. I disagree with Truss that if one had always wanted to learn how to spell Conneticut one would already know how to spell Conneticut. There are just too many delightful things that I want to learn in life and not enough time to do them all. Prioritizing puts Conneticut-spelling somewhere on the list. The opportunity to climb a mountain today means the drearier task is put off for another day.

Kleo

Ahhggg! Mary! Don't say that!

I live in a small town and have stopped using the library because of someone like you. The library refuses to do anything to catch the culprit who marks up library books by correcting bits of factual information or grammar or spelling in the margins. It is not very pleasant to not be able to use the library because of graffiti that someone adds to books that spoils others' enjoyment.

Here I am, in my home, the afternoon off, innocently enjoying a book alone with the wonderful solitude that I treasure. I catch the misspelling or the grammar error also. But now my eyes are taken off of the book to read a marginal note. The person who destroys the local library books corrects bad grammar in colloquialisms, also. This means that while enjoying James Lee Burke's masterful use of local speech in his novels about Louisiana I get yanked out of Piney Woods, Louisiana, and into the fact that my local library is not a place where I can find an escape.

It's rather expensive for me for you to write in library books. Please desist. Apply for a job as a copy editor and correct the galleys instead.

Kleo

My apologies to you personally, Kleo. With such a heartfelt plea, what can I do but promise to try to change my wicked ways. But it does so grate! At times I have found that someone before me did the correcting, and frankly, I cheer them on and feel that I have found a kindred spirit.

Pleaseeeeee give me a time for the discussion.......Thank you...

Tildy--This IS the discussion. Please type in your comments for us. The discussion will go a whole month, on this board, right here.

MaryZ--I think one of the reasons there are so many errors in printed books today is the use of word processors to do the "proofreading." Presses, in order to save money, prefer to use electronic means at certain stages. It's my guess that there are far fewer copy editors (real live human beings) out there than there used to be. I frequently find errors in the TEXTBOOKS I use.

My students use Word processing programs to write their papers. I have noticed that there's a whole new category of errors that can be laid at the door of, in addition to careless students, word processing programs.

One of the chief offenders is Spellcheck. It underlines a word in red, and if you click on the word, you get a list of words that you might have meant. If you simply ENTER instead of actually READING the words, you sometimes get a word that you didn't mean. Not only is it not the word you meant to type, but due to bad typing, it has nothing to do with your context. These words stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.

I admit, I am sensative here, because I am such a bad speller. All of my (especially school) life, I have heard comments to the effect that someone who can't spell must be ignorant and uneducated! IT'S NOT TRUE! It has something to do with the way we process information. I (and most fanatic readers) don't see words a letter at a time, I see a pattern of the whole word and I remember the meaning, not the picture. I can copy a word and misspell it. I have a PhD, have read more then most people, and have published many arcticles, and still can't spell. Spellcheck is a boon to me. I have always hoped people will forgive the fact that I am too involved in making sophisticated analyses of T.S. Eliot's poems to stop and look up how to spell his name.

Punctuation is different, because it stops the reading process and calls attention to itself. I have no excuse for the fact that I have no clue how to use commas, except laziness. I hope this book will help. I agree that I keep pushing learning commas down on my list of things to do.

The computer abrieviations bothered me when I first joined Seniornet because I didn't know what they meant. I still stumble over some of them, although I find myself using them. They remind me of the jargon I found when I started to work for the government. I swore I would never talk in "initials", (comma inside or out of the quotes?) but of course I did. Any group develops its own jargon; it does short-circuit thinking, and also lets outsiders know that they don't belong. Computer jargon is light, compared to some others.

The most surprising thing I learned in the first 67 pages concerns apostrophes. I thought I understood them, but the rule about making possessives of names ending in "s" boggled my mind. Add "'s" to modern and Biblical names; add only "'" to classical names !?! There are 1500 years of names between classical and modern times. What happens to them? In the Story of Civilization discussion, we are just about to embark on this punctuation wasteland, as we start the Middle Ages. Do we spend the rest of the discussion in punctuation limbo?

JoanK--You're right about spelling and its connection to intelligence. There isn't one. A while ago Yale did an extended study attempting to find a correlation between the ability to spell correctly and ANY other component (mathematical ability, intelligence, physical coordination--and way more than that; I just can't remember them all). They found NO correlation. In other words the ability to spell words correctly just doesn't tell us anything else about individuals.

They did, if I remember correctly, suggest that there was a genetic component to spelling. If you are a weak speller, your children may be as well.

Both of my children were weak in Spelling; even my daughter, an otherwise superb student, had many difficulties with it.

(Your comma above goes INSIDE the final quotation marks. This was all settled by typesetters in the, I think, 18th century--commas and periods go inside the final quotation mark. Semicolons and exclamations and question marks go outside the final quotation marks. "They" thought it was more aesthetically pleasing with these rules. Go figure.)

JOAN K, I don't think anyone here would make the generalization that people who misspell words are ignorant or uneducated. People who are careless or lazy about spelling are a pet peeve of mine. It probably comes from the editing I do. Why should I spend all that time correcting someone's spelling when there are other, more important aspects of editing to do? Maybe if these people were Thomas Wolfe, who never learned punctuation, I understand, I would have the patience of his editor, Max Perkins, and not grumble about doing the job.

Yes, I would expect you to spell Eliot's name right, but that's just me. ( "That's just I" for the purists here.)

Mal

I think Eats, Shoots and Leaves is an amusing look at common mistakes by an intelligent and clever writer. For quick, easy reference and answers to questions like Joan's about apostrophes, I would not recommend this book. Patricia T. O'Conner's Woe is I does fill that bill. Here, in part, is what O'Conner says on Page 157 about the use of apostrophes:

"Possessives

"To indicate ownership, add 's to a singular noun or to a plural noun that does not end in s. Add the apostrophe alone to a plural noun that ends in s. ( Lynne Truss and I don't always agree with this, but it's a good, solid rule to know.)

"Some unusual plurals

"Add 's to make plurals of numbers and letters, including abbreviations. Libby, the daughter of two CPA's, was born in the 1940's.

Missing letters

"An apostrophe can show where letters have been dropped in a shortened word or phrase. For example, shouldn't is short for should not; the apostrophe shows where the o in not was dropped. Some other clipped words are quite irregular like won't and the illegitimate ain't. Shortened words are called contractions. When in doubt, look it up.

"A comma or period

"When you need a comma or period ( or any other punctuation, for that matter) after a possessive word that ends with an apostrophe, the punctuation goes after the apostrophe. The idea was the boys', but the responsibility was their parents'."

We have to keep in mind that Lynne Truss is English, and English punctuation is not always the same as what we use in America.

Mal

In The Story of Civilization I am faithful about copying Durant's words but the fidelity ends there. I make punctuation changes liberally where I believe such changes make the text more readable on the screen. Durant's books tend to have long paragraphs. I shorten them considerably, breaking them into smaller paragraphs where I believe it is appropriate.
Durant, or his editor or proofreader, use(s?) semi-colons often. I never use them but change them to periods resulting in smaller sentences. Where there are long sentences containing numerous phrases separated by commas, I replace the commas with double dashes, believing this to be more visually comprehensible.
I never use an exclamation point except to copy one that Durant uses. That has been extremely rare. I will often replace parentheses with double dashes, again to make it more visually understandable. You might say I follow the advertiser's maxim of always having plenty of "white space."
Durant rarely uses question marks but when speaking as Discussion Leader (not copying his words), one of my responsibilities is to stir up discussion. If I use a colon, either by copying Durant or by making my own statements, I always place a dash after the colon. This, of course, follows no grammatical rule but I believe that the colon is not always seen as such because it is so close to the next word, so I separate it for greater visibility.
I have had considerable training in grammar and punctuation and usually know the "right" thing to do but any creative writing I do usually contains punctuation which I place there because it feels comfortable -- as if I were talking to someone.
So go ahead and eat your own shoots. Even leave if you wish but that is the way I communicate.

Robby

Email has been a wonderful way for my husband and me to keep in touch with our 3 kids, who are spread out in different cities. I know we aren't on the relevant page yet, but wasn't email written e-mail just a few years ago?

Regarding the left out apostrophes: didn't everyone write 1980's during the 1980s? However, I do think that the latter way is best; less space is economical.

Do we get points taken off ;-} for using semicolons too often?

When the American edition came out, it was glowingly reviewed in the NYT by Patricia T. O'Conner (yes, O'ConnEr), an author herself, notably of WOE IS I : The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English (1996), which has become essential to me and which I champion every chance I get -- as you can see right here.

Based on that review I bought "Eats, etc.". Its title is an actual entry in an encyclopedia; Truss uses it as title to show the importance of punctuation (commas, in this case). When put in the wrong place, a comma can distort and change the meaning of a sentence.

When writing for WREX with a view toward having a story published in one of MAL's electronic magazines, correct spelling and punctuation are an obvious necessity. Sadly, punctuation as well as the spelling of even the most elementary words are often way off the mark in some of the stories submitted and require heavy editing by MAL.

Some points Truss makes in this little book are well worth considering in detail. Her complaints against sloppy e-mail and emoticons (not against e-mail per se, if I understand her correctly) come at the very end. May I suggest not to take them too personally.

Would it be possible for the links on the "Books" page at SeniorNet to link to this page instead of to the old one? Once I get into SeniorNet I have to start somewhere before checking my subscriptions.

Kleo

I'm delighted about the discussion of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. I'm a Stickler who is often outraged at the poor use of punctuation in our world today, and this was one of my favorite books of the year. I have to say that when I first saw the title and knew nothing else about the book, I DIDN'T notice the punctuation and interpreted it as Eats: Shoots and Leaves, and I assumed it was a book on health food. (Eats as in meals: Shoots as in alfalfa shoots and Leaves as in lettuce). Is there an emoticon for embarrassed?

WOW! What a wonderful start, so glad to hear from all of you!! And what great points you raise, let's look at a few!

hahaha Maryal, thank you for that nice thought on the first question.

Where is Jonathan, I'm afraid to hear his first thoughts on the title! Hahaha

What with the Latin classes I'm up before sunrise!

Robby, an excellent point on too, two, to, and the difference in spoken and written English!

Malryn, IS it an old joke? I have never heard it? The panda is an old joke?

So now that you're more tolerant, do you think that being an Inner Stickler is anal or not?

I would ike to talk further about emoticons? To me the emoticon is the Tool of the Lazy. I hate them. And I have found on internet discourse, that almost every time this horror

is preceded by something insulting or nasty.

To me, saying something hateful and then putting a stupid smile to show no harm intended when I spit in your face, is an insult. I have gotten so I wince when I see one of them coming.

I hate them.

What are all of YOUR thoughts today on the Emoticon, those lovely little stupid :-0 things you see everywhere. HATE them…er…..

Ann you knew the book was about a panda when you saw the title? From the cover? I thought it was about a basketball player, myself! Hahahaha

Carole , how is email different for you than regular letter writing?

Is there a different style, do you feel more casual with email? I know it's more immediate, am talking about style?

DEEMS hahahah on the vegetarian cookbook, ahahhaa restaurant, it's surely catchy, isn't it?

Do you think the title proves the point of the book?

Mary, so YOU are the one correcting@ hashashaha

You equate punctuation then to good manners?

Betty good point on the secretary's noticing things, do YOU think email is structurally different from regular correspondence?

Barbara good point on dashes and exclamation points use on the internet, I guess we get more complaints about those than any other thing, how do the rest of you feel about over use of the exclamation point in internet or email communications? Ex: Email!!! Photos!!!!

Kleo, are you saying it's not possible to clearly communicate on the internet without LOL? I hate LOL, I never know if it means laughing out loud (in which case why not say that) or Lots of Love, which I always take it as.

Kleo you ask about the Archived discussion? Go to that discussion and click on Unsubscribe. Then come here and click on SUBSCRIBE, that will fix your problem? We need to leave that old discussion up for a while till we all find our way in here. Hahaha on Dietary Habits!

Love your thoughts on the periodic die off of bamboo, we ought to get up a list of what we all thought it was and send it to her, I think she'd love it.

I see that the new SAT test which will have a total score of 2400 HAS a section ON punctuation, did you all know that?

Maryal you are SO right on the Curse of the Word Processor, hahahah and Spell Check! Hahahahah and the words are soooo tiny.

Joan K, you and me both, I once had a professor write on an English paper, "Spelling is so bad I can't stand it any more." hahahaha Dear, dear man, that was before Spell Check!

Is it your opinion that computer internet jargon (LOL, :-l ) has aided or detracted from standard English?

Great point on one of the many suprprising things, Classical names, Biblical names, how about that bit about capital letters beginning a sentence only after the 14th century? That one brought me up short!

Punctuaion Limbo ahhaah I have BEEN in punctuation limbo for years, note the question mark after every one of my sentences?

Malryn , thank you for that interesting look at contractions from Woe is I!

Robby why would you change a perfectly good semi colon to a period (or full stop as Truss calls it?)

hahah on your pun with the title.

Mippy, me too, I have always said the '80's , looks strange to me without it, and wrong!

Not only do we not get points OFF for using the semi colon, we get points ON for using it correctly! I LOVE the semi colon!! Just be sure it's followed by a word like however, and a comma.

We'll get to it soon.

Traude, since Truss takes up emoticons and email now, it's fair game, but we can all refer as well to the end if you like, anything mentioned in the first 67 pages is fair game.

Do you personally think that internet communication and email are the same level of literacy that (or should be on the same level) that other printed texts are? Should it be to the same standard?

Let's go ahead and discuss the various means of communication we all engage in, internet postings, email, emoticons, acronyms, this week. If you like, you may refer ahead to her passages later on this, as well.

DO Emoticons and acronyms ruin the language? ARE they excuses for slipshod writing or, worse, excuses for simple bad manners? ARE they bad manners themselves? What of the ubiquitous smiley face? What good are they and what use can they be?

If the message is negative, does pasting a LOL or a smiley face make it all ok?

Wouldn't the writer be better served trying to take 5 more minutes to express himself accurately? (Or maybe he IS expressing himself accurately and trying to excuse it?) What have email, the internet, the Emoticon and the acronym DONE to civilized communication?

HOW are they different, let us tell the ways!

HOW can we ever remember all those rules for the 's, when uses as a possessive? Is there any clever way to remember these things? WHY is English so DIFFICULT!?

Penny for your thoughts?

There was a time when letter writing was an art. Now everyone seems to be in a big hurry to get somewhere (where, I don't know.) Email fits in with that. Today it's zip off a quick email note and call that kind of instant communicating letter writing.

Email is a nice way to keep in touch with far away relatives, especially one's kids, if they live a good distance away. It is not, however, conversation. Trying to make it that way with emoticons doesn't work, in my opinion.

I become impatient with acronyms and abbreviations. You expect me to figure out your acronym? Come on.

I have to fight not to become angry about one of the most recent, popular abbreviations: "carb." I don't like "fav", either, as in "Little Women is my fav."

Most of all I dislike the use of "hehehehe". What I think of when I read that is a Simon Legree type twirling his mustache as he stands over a poor, victimized woman.

I also do not like the use of dashes and ellipses instead of punctuation. The written word cannot be the same as the spoken word, and the overuse of dashes and ellipses will never make it that way.

As for multi exclamation marks, don't even mention them. ( ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! )

Mal

I know why Robby changes paragraphing and punctuation in quotes he types from the Durants' Story of Civilization. I've typed these quotes in that discussion when Robby has been away at Psychology conferences, or away on a long weekend, and I've done the same thing.

When Will Durant began writing the early books of this eleven volume study of civilization, the style of writing was quite different from what it is now. Durant uses long sentences, which consist of many clauses separated from each other by a semi-colon or colon. They are difficult, and sometimes boring, to read. The paragraphs can be very long, too.

Of necessity, I think, in order to hold a reader's attention when writing something that appears on the web, such as these message boards, one must keep sentences short with paragraphs separated by a double space. This method makes reading from a computer monitor much easier.

I've noticed that other authors of the time, and before, wrote as Will Durant did. Henry James and Edith Wharton are two that come to mind. Today it seems as if there is more dialogue in fiction writing than there are long passages of description.

Mal

Lynne Truss compares, or quotes someone else comparing, punctuation to good manners - a way of making things move along more smoothly. I just liked that analogy.

The emoticons and acronyms don't bother me in e-mails. I don't consider "8^)" to be a sarcastic smirk. I see it as a way to express a smile in casual written communication. I've been known to express other not-so-nice emoticons, too. As for the LOL, ROFLOL, etc., it's (short for "it is") just a shorthand intended for informal written communication. I'd certainly never use it in anything formal. I'd equate it with saying "Hi" when greeting a friend casually, as opposed to "Pleased to meet you. How are you?" when being introduced formally to someone.

Vocabulary choices in fiction, as well as length of sentences and paragraphs, varies with the type of work and the intended audience.

"Sticklers unite, you have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion, and arguably you didn't have a lot of that to begin with." -- Lynne Truss

I enjoy Truss' humor. (No added s after her name as I find it looks too awkward, although one ends up hissing like a snake in any case.)

Truss understands about proportion and makes fun of her Stickler-self even as she has fun with grammar errors. Her list of the weapons required for the apostrophe war includes: correction fluid, big pens, stickers to cover unwanted apostrophes, guerrilla-style clothing, strong medication for personality disorder, loudhailer, gun.

Ominous how she begins with proportion and ends with a big bang.

Marvelle

I'm the No. 1 hold for this book at the library, but for now am just lurking and following the discussion.

Emoticons -- all those little parentheses and period thingys -- I don't know what they mean and am afraid to use them because I might get somebody really peeved.

But, things like LOL -- do you really hate them? Would you rather it be spelled out? I use that and <BG> which I think means big grin and not bad girl, just to let the reader (email & SN posts only) know it's an attempt at humor. Admit it folks. There have been times people have become upset over a post, when the poster was only trying to be funny.

Obviously I need this book NOW! Must learn about dashes, esclamation points, more dashes, and commas. They're important in offline writing, but on the Internet, with short communications, the highest priority should be making sure you are understood.

"I become impatient with acronyms and abbreviations. You expect me to figure out your acronym? Come on."

By the way, Mal, what does WREX stand for? I looked it up at www.onelook.com, and I don't think you mean any of the 4 meanings they provide, unless you're a railroad engineer.

Kleo

It's just so pejorative to say someone is lazy with their communication style. If you really think they're lazy why are you communicating with them?

Sarcasm doesn't travel the Internet. Real time chat is one of the places where a lol can make something funny.

The Internet will always be conversational communication to me. Like most conversation it is casual communication, not formal--after all, we haven't even been introduced, how can we be writing to each other? After all, this isn't a business letter. And casual communication, more so than formal, allows for rapid change. Communicating by computers is new. It comes with a new language.

I don't use email as a substitute for letters. I use email as a substitue for phone calls, which I've always disliked because I have Tinnitus.

I also know a lot of deaf people and house bound disabled folks who live in a much larger world with computers and the Internet than they did without them.

'Hate' and 'lazy' are just such strong opinions, it seems to me. I don't think I would want to chat, email, (<----- how Oxfordian of me) or communicate with lazy people who constantly used abbreviations and emoticons that I hated. It seems rather trying.

Kleo

dsI just picked up the book yesterday and have not read up to page 67. Joan is about there and then I will catch up to you.
About the emoticons, one should be aware that the symbols used really belong to a language other than English. They evolved from such languages as Basic, Cobol, C+ and Pascal. Most of the origins were used by typists who knew more of the "outer keyboard" than the locations of the common letters. Many of these folks could type faster with two fingers than the ordinary person can with all ten.
With the advent of the "Smiley Face" (A bright yellow smiling relative to Pac-Man) These "programmers" (OK Hackers if you will) started incorporating the various "Do Dads" in their communications. Along came Public Access to the Internet and these "Do Dads" became very popular as a type of shorthand and needed a better name. They became Emoticons. (Emot from Emotion and Icon, meaning a pictorial symbol)
I bet you didn't (short for did not) even want to kinow all that, and that is the 50¢ version. Shall I go for the $5 explanation?

Theron

Ah, not much of one it seems. My mother and I do take delight at museum signs, still.

The book is a lot of fun.

When I first started reading it a woman I know commented that it was a good thing for me to read it as I always put apostrophes on my dates where they don't go (1980's). I changed my style before reading the book Seems I was right. I'm not sure bringing out the inner stickler in so many people is a good idea.

I wish good punctuation were more like good manners. It's something you do because that's the way you were raised, but you don't go around noticing others' lack of manners. That in itself would be the utmost in bad manners. One should lead by example.

Unlike manners, however, certain people, sources, and types of communication should be fair game. School teachers, business letters, résumés, printed materials from educational institutes, and taxpayer funded highway signs all come to mind.

Kleo

Theron--Sure, what the hey--go for it. I love reading history even when it is recent history. From my noninvolved perspective, the internet wasn't there and then it WAS there. I know it existed before I knew about it. And I know that not everyone on the internet was a troglydite. But some were, weren't they?

Kleo--I agree with so much you posted above. I'll have to go back to check what especially engaged me.

Found it. You said, "I don't use email as a substitute for letters. I use email as a substitue for phone calls, which I've always disliked because I have Tinnitus."

I'm with you on that one. I also use email as a substitute for phone calls. No problem with my ears, but over the years I have had so much bad news so often over the phone that I just don't like it any more. I don't even have a cell phone although around here, folks are practically at the point of offering to give you one free AND pay for you to use it. I would have loved one when I was a teenager.

I, too, use e-mails in place of phone calls. It's a real time saver. I don't always use complete sentences, but I do try to use appropriate punctuation even in informal writing.

Emoticons? I find them annoying. I think LOL should be banned. If you use it after something you've said, it sounds like a comedian laughing at his own jokes. If you use it about something I've written, I'd rather you just tell me it's funny.

Just to set the record straight, Emoticons (pictorial representations) are the symbols used { happyor ( wickedly evil}; LOL, ROFLOL and the like are acronyms for whatever the reader happens to think of at the time and can mean one thing to one group and something else to others. What, pray tell, could TTYL mean?

Theron

Okay, KLEO, you got me good. I hope you're pleased, ha ha.

The meaning of WREX is posted right under my name. It's the name my predecessor as leader of this particular writing group, Bernice LeClaire, gave to the group many years ago when it was pulled together from 12 separate writing groups in the forums in SeniorNet on AOL.

I went into the group's forum one Friday, the day before a deadline for the exchange of writing for critique was to take place, and found that Bernice had understandably left without notice. Since I'd been helping Bernice for a brief time, I volunteered to get the stories out to the submitters the next day. I volunteered to do this job of collating and sending out submittals because I think the writing of seniors here is very, very important. Seven years later I'm still doing it, mainly because nobody will commit herself or himself to do the work involved, and there's plenty.

It's not just that, either. I still think seniors sitting down to write are whole lot better off than seniors growing old in a chair while they look out the window thinking about the past.
WREX WR(iters) EX(change)
Get it now? You'll find us in the Writing, Language Word Play area of SeniorNet. You'll see some of the writing we do in Allegro, an electronic magazine I've edited and published since I volunteered for this cheerleader's job.

Allegro contains only the writing of SeniorNet WREX Writers Exchange writers. I do this and publish two other electronic literary magazines, one a poetry journal, only to get the writing of people, who might not be published otherwise, on the World Wide Web and in the view of a whole lot of readers, I hope.

I'll lay off now, so you won't think what 86 year old Gladys Barry told me she had thought before she met me at the SeniorNet Virginia Bash in Richmond last May. "Mal," she said, "I always thought you were an old bat, and you're not!". What a surprise!

Neither am I anal, GINNY, (if I knew what that meant) to think speaking and writing the English language well are an important part of life. No, I'm a cluttery person who likes to laugh a lot and have fun.

From a wheelchair perspective,
Still feisty Mal!

I agree with your comments on emoticons and acronyms. Thanks Mal for explaining your use of the acronym.

I too feel that words, such as hate, are extreme and don't reflect the meaning or nature of the person initially posting with an emoticon.

I mentioned earlier that I first posted on SN for over a year without understanding emoticons. I was too shy to ask what they meant when people used them in posts. It was Ginger who explained the basic signs to me.

I noticed, even when I didn't understand emoticons, that the people who used them were good-natured. They laugh at themselves as well as at the world; they don't exclude themselves from the joke on humanity.

I've tried emoticons once or twice but they don't work for me. I fail when I depend on a symbol to describe what I intended with words. That's my loss.

I have occassionally used emoticons and grammatical slips in this forum because that's the subject of the discussion. There is an additional exception to my not using emoticons and that's IMO (in my opinion) and maybe I feel comfortable with it because it isn't conveying an emotion. I don't use IMHO (in my humble opinion) because it sounds anything but humble. I don't mind, however, when others use IMHO.

Marvelle

I'm going to try to be good and follow the discussion schedule. Can't promise that I'll succeed all the time.

The book is organized as follows:

p1 to 67 - Introduction to concept of Stickler and the Seventh Sense; Apostrophe "the multi-tasking female" of punctuation.

p68 to 131 - Comma "it tells the reader how to hum the tune"; colon and semicolon "punctuation as an art".

p132 to end - Attention getting punctuation such as the exclamation mark, dash, italic "punctuation that can't help saying it with knobs on". Attention getters also include the question mark (punctus interrogativus), quotation marks, dash (dasshem), brackets, ellipsis, and hyphens. Lastly, Truss talks about electronic communication which includes emoticons and acronyms.

Lynne Truss keeps talking about proportation in all matters. She doesn't discuss sentence diagramming but that might be fun for another discussion. Taking things apart is a useful tool for learning how things work.

Marvelle

I always thought the sideways smileys were just a cute way to let someone know how you were feeling. I don't use them too often because I forget to. I don't usually use those initials because I have never really learned them. I do think that some of our bad spelling habits could be the result of dealing with the internet and having to make up codes for passwords and labelling graphics with as few letters as possible.

Theron--TTYL might be TALK to YOUR LLama

but my guess is that it's Talk to you later.

But you see, LOL isn't necessarily telling you that you're funny, or that I think what I said was funny. It's often a shared joke.

For example, if I had been chatting with Mal during this exchange with the WREX and all going on about here, Mal's "Okay, KLEO, you got me good. I hope you're pleased, ha ha," would have deserved a realtime LOL in response as I pointed out her missed opportunity to question my earlier denial of laziness. I'm guessing that Mal would have laughed out loud, indeed.

Why is it that 'ha ha' is okay but 'lol' is not? I think it's just because it's new.

On the other hand, Internet abbreviations can be dreadfully overused, and I admit I don't care for emoticons. 'IMHO' has never been humbly used. 'TTYL' means 'Talk To You Later.' And, on the Internet most of these have accepted usages within the medium, not variable. This does not mean that the twins down the street can't make up their own private language.

Back to 'lol.' Wasn't it Fitzgerald who said that an exclamation point in writing is like laughing at yourself?

Kleo

Deems; How about Take That You Louse???

Theron

As a self-confessed stickler myself for the rules, grammatical and otherwise, I was delighted to see CAT WOMAN. Welcome!

Regarding e-mail :

As I tried to say yesterday, there is no need to become unduly exercised over Truss's impatient condemnation of "sloppy" e-mail and emoticons. Her pronouncements are not carved in stone; very little is. We can doubtless agree that e-mail is a convenient, expedient way to reach (any number of) people at any time day or night in the blink of an eye. However, the use of emoticons and unorthodox, ungrammatical abbreviations in e-mail messages is strictly a matter of choice, I think, and is between the sender(s) and the recipient(s). (All I ever used is <g>, which stands for "grin", I understand.)

KLEO, it seems to me that "in my humble opinion", "I believe", "I think" are disclaimers, i.e. (preventive) attempts at civility, designed not to offend if a disparate point of view is expressed; in other words, a formality, an effort at moderation. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, is there? After all, it is important not only WHAT we say but HOW we say it = c'est le ton qui fait la musique = the tone makes the music.

Title....(yeah, I know, the ...aren't grammatically correct)Like Maryal, I thought it was the name of an organic or "new age" deli somewhere.

For me, email has indeed replaced letter writing. The majority of my family and friends are online and those who aren't get phone calls these days.

I don't mind LOL and C U Later and those kinds of internet abbreviations.

My view is that emoticons and abbreviations are not lazy, and I think they are important often in letting the reader know that the writer is joking/teasing. From my years of posting on sites like SeniorNet, I think they're vital to some posts and help to keep "misinterpretation" of meaning from happening more often than it does.

I dislike the excessive use of ! by some. When I find 8-10 in 4 lines of text, I wonder if the person really does speak that way in everyday conversation. They wear me out just reading their text. I think, as someone once wrote, every person should be given only 5 or 10 ! to use in a lifetime. Dare I use an emoticon now?

;0)

jane

Could it be that such abbreviations like LOL and IMHO come from the days when computer memory/space was very tight and there were no bits to spare? That was also why one used only one space after a period.

It seems to me that it's a language I haven't really aquired as yet. I noticed that my grandson used a lot of abbreviations when he was here and used the computer for instant messaging. Email certainly beats the ubiquitous telephone; as I'm on the phone a lot at the Center, I much prefer email at home. My children are scattered about the US and many of my friends are abroad.

Colkot

The seventh sense is the ability to see dead punctuation.( p3)

Truss keeps mentioning the need for balance. She says that extremist grammarians, both the purists and the slipshod, can kill the English language.

Dead punctuation and extremist grammarians reminds me of the similar concept of dead words.

Traditional oral storytellers consider printed words to be dead. An oral tale is created by the teller and the listener together; the story changes according to the time, place, teller and listener.

Today's Native American writers see the humor and the challenge of having their stories in print. Dead Voices by Gerald Vizenor is one example. Typically Native American writers use symbols and other literary devices to keep the reader, or listener, actively involved in co-creating and understanding the story. The story isn't rigid. It's alive and flexible.

Marvelle

pedlin: Your comment on saving memory is right up to a point. The more important consideration in the early days was the modem speed. When the communication was via bulletin board, not internet, the "fast modem" was 600 baud and the average speed was 300 baud. This is to be compared with a comparitavely slow dial-up is now 56,000 baud. If your dial-up provider granted you a set amount of time to be on line per month, the shorthand abreviations were very needed.
My first dial-up allowed me to use 10 hours per month to access the list of bulletin boards provided. If it took 2.5 minutes to download a standard page, there was little to be said for using proper grammar and fully written out expressions.

Theron

When I first heard the title I thought someone had eaten a meal,hot everyone in the restaurant , and left. So I am not very imaginative. There is so much violence in the world that I was expecting more violence. I said well the punctuation is wrong in that title. Having taught English and writing for many years I just automatically check for punctuation and grammatical errors. I think I am going to try to stop this though.

As for emoticons, I really do not mind them. I don't think they are laziness or sloppy expression. Sometimes it is good to have a way to show that you are not really seious or that you don't mean any offensive by a remark. In face to face conversation many people will say something like "just kidding" after a remark that could be taken as offensive. I always think to myself , "no you aren't. If you were kidding you would not have added that last phrase.

I don't mind LOL either. However when people use things that I have never seen before I find myself getting irritated because I am spending time figuring out what they mean.

Email really doesn't take the place of writing letters with me. I like to use it instead of the telephone mainly because it is often so hard to get a person on the phone. I usally end up having to call over and over before I reach someone. If I send an email I know that the person will eventually see the message.

Those are the only comments I have right now.

Joan Grimes

Which acronyms were most used when time was limited?

Did IMHO come from those days?

I have always disliked IMHO because it takes me longer to type (I touchtype) than "I think."

May I assume that many of the pioneers of the internet used two fingers?

Deems: The acronyms were pre-internet and generally, the bulletin board operator would suggest (in a list) what the common usage meanings were on that paricular board. Many times in those early days, the meanings were different on different boards.
That was somewhaat standardized by the .edu internet before it was opened to the general public.

Theron

Interesting that many of you use e-mail instead of the telephone. I'm the opposite: when I'm not on the computer, I'm usually on the phone with my friends. Since my mobility is limited, I keep in touch that way.

The problem with e-mail is that you can't hrar the other person laugh. LOL is a very poor sustitute. Every day at three, I call a friend who recently, suddenly and unexpectedly became a paraplegic. She is gradually regaining the use of her hands. We do the crossword puzzles together, and it is a triumph for her that she can now write the letters in the little boxes. The day that I heard her laugh for the first time since her injury was a big day for me: no e-mail could have captured that moment.

The title was explained in the review of the book, which I read before I sent for it. Therefore the pandas on the jacket cover were no longer a revelation.

The subtitle, "The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation", defines what Truss intends to do with this book: point to the perils of incorrectpunctuation. That is her "beef", and I admire her singlemindedness.

She can be sarcastic; in my not so humble opinion she is in fact a bit intemperate when she says - after several pages of explaining "it's" and "its",

"No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by ligthning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave." (page 44) (emphasis mine)

Truss might have devoted her crusading enthusiasm also to some egregious spelling errors that plague the spoken and written English, specifically American English, each and every day. That would be a worthwhile effort- again, in my not so numble opinion.

Well, I don't think these errors merit being hacked to death, but they are my pet punctuation peeves, probably because they are the most common punctuation errors. I saw "it's" in an ad in place of "its" while I was waiting at the cash register in Bed, Bath and Beyond. I can't recall what the ad was for, but I sent the company an e-mail saying if they were that sloppy in their punctuation, I wondered if their products were equally sloppy. So do I qualify for the militant wing of the Apostrophe Protection Society?

And does everyone posting in this discussion feel as nervous as I do about punctuating their e-mails?

Well, Cat Woman, I certainly fear incorrect punctuation and speling in my posts on this board.

My emails are to friends. They don't care about my punctuation. Or if they do, they know better than to tell me.

Kleo

I can understand French Cuisine but I never could understand Italian Cuisine. It should be Italian Cucina.

Robby

Better yet, ROBBY, cucina italiana (placement of the adjective in relation to the noun is very important in Italian).

CAT WOMAN, good for you! However, that particular error is all too common. Even Lynne Truss must have realized that "enlightenment" in the form of a permanent correction is highly unlikely as long as linguistic carelessness prevails. Is it possible that deliberate linguistic carelessness is considered "hip" or "cool" by the young? Who knows? I think it's sad.

Furthermore, sloppy writing goes hand in hand with sloppy speech: seemingly articulate people on TV talk shows often blurt out phrases like "I should have WENT (instead of gone) there first"..., or "He could have GAVE (instead of given) it to us." What WERE they taught in elementary school about the tenses, I wonder? Unfortunately, that's only the tip of the iceberg.

The late great Ann Landers once wrote that phrases like "... this is between you and I (which should be ME)", or "This is for Kristy and I..." (instead of ME) made her skin crawl. Mine too. And what about the eternal confusion between "lie" and "lay"?? Heaven help! (And yes, I stand by the exclamation mark here.)

I've never had a problem with any of the aforementioned grammatical horrors even though English is not my native tongue and I speak several languages besides. You can bet I saw to it that both my daughter and my son became "sticklers". It is good to be one. I've never believed in the lowest denominator in anything. Learning is a life-long process. That is precisely what AAUW promotes.

(In parentheses, GINNY mentioned AAUW recently in the "Books at the Beach" folder; the acronym stands for American Association of University Women, an organization to which I have belonged since the nineteen sixties.)

I can well understand that Ann Landers might feel sick unto death about all those millions of 'between you and I/me' letters that she must have received, knowing full-well that her correspondents wished her to pass the secrets on to the rest of the world.

I would like to question the phrase, 'the late great Ann Landers.'. And suggest that either a comma or a hyphen might make it less equivocal. If she is both late and great, then a comma should come after late. If she is now lately great, then late and great would be better hyphenated. IMSHO. In my sincerely...etc.

Jonathan

I had to think about the Land's End versus Lands' End. To Truss, Land's End may seem the only correct one because she is British. Possibly the American company meant to be more international, or at least more inclusively North American. In this case, Lands' End might be Canada and America. Except, for a little geographical error, there. I have to hand Truss the Land's End, one. After all, we sing, 'This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York Island....' NOT these lands are your lands....' I think that the land that ends is the extreme northeastern tip of the United States of America. This means they should have used Land's End. On the other hand Truss gives British stores free reign. Why pick on the American one? Maybe they just wanted to be distinct from the other Land's End.

I knew a scientist who spoke many languages, including Russian, Polish, Mongolian, Mandarin, some native Siberian languages, French, German, and English. He was literate in all of the Indo-European languages he spoke and the Mongolian and Chinese, writing and reading scientific papers, and communicating with scientists all over the world in these languages (via letters). For some reason he never mastered the use of articles in English. I doubt that scientists and others reading his papers, coming across one of his failures to use an article properly, dismiss everything he wrote because his writing was sloppy. Scientists did not reject communicating with him because his speech was sloppy, either. In fact, the content of the papers and the books was always more important than the use of articles. Possibly he should have dropped a research project or two and mastered English articles? Still, I notice the dropped articles, they jar a bit while reading his works. This, I think, is the reason for paying attention to your grammar, as your manners, to make life comfortable for everyone else.

Truss is making a living off of it, after all. I am not.

My frustration is with real sloppiness or carelessness. My grammar sticklierness is reserved for the schools and the supposedly educated. There is no excuse for museum signs and business letters to contain glaring errors. Business names? Why not spend five minutes to research it? Well, in the case of Lands' End it might have been a bit longer--haven't they been around since the horse and buggy days?

I consider proper use of language to be important. I teach conversational ESL. Other teachers can pick my students out of their classes because my students' spoken English is excellent. I don't work with my students to attain native-speaker accents. I work with my students to communicate effectively with others (I tutor scientists, engineers, mathematicians and doctors in the jargon of their field). This is what language is about, culture and communication.

But I can't devote my life to anxiety or irritation over grammar errors and miss communicating with other human beings as a side effect. Still, I will have my fun with museum signs and urge all of you to head off to one for a bit of delight.

Kleo

Traude.. I'm with you..although I was born and brought up in England, English was not my first language. I also married a man who was conversant in three other languages as well as English. My children were brought up in a dual language environment.Looking back,I seem to have spent my life editing English grammar/spelling, both for my mother and for my husband.(My husband;God rest his soul; had a poor visual memory and could spell the same word in many different ways, be it Polish or English... and Polish is consistent,and has Latin grammar) My children were well taught. One is a writer and journalist for the NY Daily News. Two pet peeves..."lend" and "borrow" are not the same thing. Also: "I never done nothing to nobody".. what is THAT supposed to mean? I could go on and on...but it's a holiday weekend! Colkot

Colkot--

I am a very poor speller in English. This is one reason I love Polish. It's the easiest language in the world to spell in. I have to admit to a bit of wonder about what variability your husband imparted to his Polish spelling. I think one would have to really work at it, to do so. Polish is not only consistent in spelling rules, all of the consonants and vowels are pronounced the same all of the time, and always pronounced, and stresses are invariable, too. It's a great language for the spellingly challenged. English writing must have been a nightmare for your husband. Good for you that you were willing to play grammar and spell checker.

Kleo

Lands' End, the company in Wisconsin and elsewhere I'm sure, has been around since the early 1960s and started with sailing "stuff." I've heard the ' after the s was a mistake which they kept. I did some searching to make sure what I recalled was correct and you can read it from the founder here:

Click here for Lands' End history

jane

Wheooo finally getting in here, LOVE that, Jane, how charming, thank you so much, note what he equates their use of the apostrophe with, love it. Reminds me of my husband's first business sign, proudly done by one of the children of a partner, child ran out of space so Mechanical became Mechnical. I thought they should have kept it, myself. I've called it Mech nical ever since. hahaah Back in a mo, super posts, and points, All!

My other pet peeve is the misuse of lie/lay. I've almost given up on that one. It seems "lay" has taken over and "lie" is becoming archaic, but it still annoys me.

I am both a speech-language pathologist and a writer, so I'm very attuned to language errors. Hopefully, there aren't any in this post.

Here's my question. I recently took a Leisure Learning course on getting rid of clutter. The instructor, who was an engaging lecturer, introduced herself as both a clutter consultant and an image consultant. During her lecture, she mentioned advising a client to return a suit he'd been wearing for six months because it looked bad. Well, after the first lecture I read the booklet she sold for $15 on getting rid of clutter in your home. I found so many errors on the first two pages that I started to count. At the end of the book I had tallied 156 errors. These included the sentence in her resume that she worked with trail lawyers (I assume these people practice law on horseback), many many punctuation errors, run-on sentences, semantic errors such as advising clients not to be overwhelmed by the "largesse" of their houses (size, perhaps?}and grammatic and stylistic errors as well. I thought, "Wow! If this lady is an image consultant, shouldn't she think about her own image?" Here's my question: In view of her advising a client to ask for money back from a suit that looked bad, should I have asked for the $15 back for the slovenly booklet? (I didn't, but SHOULD I have?} Would you?

Oh, Cat Woman, perhaps they were Western United States lawyers (can I just say adjectival United States or do I need an apostrophe there?). Trails are rather big issues out here. Maybe they were trail specialists with the EPA. Again, big issue: trails in designated wilderness areas. Maybe she helps off-roaders with their image as abusers of trails.

Maybe their houses are generous givers of, well, of odors? Maybe her clients live in gorgeous homes that offend with their ostentatious presence giving pleasure to all so honored as to be able to look upon them? She might really have meant largesse.

I think you should have requested your money back. I would have.

Kleo

Catwoman: Yes, you deserved your money back. You hadn't had it 6 MONTHS and it was obviously poor quality. I can't believe she'd advise someone to return something they'd worn 6 MONTHS. Obviously ethics wasn't part of the "image" she was attempting to sell.

Incredible.

EDIT: Is that correct? Ethics with a singular verb? My little Webster's says ethics - n.pl [with sing.v]

jane

Anybody remember James J. Kilpatrick? Before the superficial fluff of Andy Rooney descended upon CBS' "60 Minutes", the show used to conclude with political arguments between the right-wing Kilpatrick and Shana Alexander. (Are both deceased now?) I was always on Alexander's side.

Anyway, Kilpatrick was a good wordsmith who wrote a column (The Writer's Art) for The Chicago Sun Times.

He once listed horrible writing examples, including this one submitted by me: "The Cubs' manager is hoping that last year's pitching performance by Mike Bielecki was not an apparition". Kilpatrick's column pointed out that the word should be spelled aberration.

I wrote Kilpatrick to point out that "apparition" had been spelled correctly, but was a malaprop--simply, the wrong word. Kilpatrick wrote back to concede my point (but preferred "malapropism"). In print, he later corrected that and other errors that he had called mere spelling errors.

I have owned Patricia O'Connor's "Woe Is I" since it came out in paperback in 1998.

Ad from the Chicago Tribune mag of May 23, 1993: "Chicago's Most Beautiful New Hotel Is Also It's Best Value". It's is?

Lands' End: I'm disappointed. I always had this romantic vision of all lands coming to an end and only blue water ahead. However, I will continue to live in Lands' End clothes. They make the most comfortable pants I ever had. I now never wear anything else.

Well of course there's Land's End, England (do they use the apostrophe correctly?) which DOES jut out into the sea, and IS the end of the land, and which I always thought was so romantic (and vaguely thought the catalogue people were named after) hahahaha.

The things you learn on SeniorNet.

I consider Eats, Shoots and Leaves to be satiric rather than sarcastic; satiric in the Menippean style.

Truss keeps saying, over and over, that moderation is the key. She starts a section by saying 'Sticklers unite, but let's keep things in proportion. Let's not go to extremes.' She then escalates into hyperbole - not sarcasm - for instance as she wages war on behalf of the misused apostrophe, armoring herself first with a big pen, gradually adding weapons of war such as stencils, loudhailer and ending with a gun. That is self-parody.

Truss has enforced limits on herself; when she writes satire she cannot use an emoticon (smile) or acronym <TIC> (Tongue in Check), but the Menippean style is consistently used and I wonder if it will continue throughout the book.

Paraphrase from www.english.upen.edu: 'Types of satire include the Horatian (gentle mockery), Juvenalian (savage criticism), and Menippean, also known as Varronian. Mennipean satire is characterized by an almost formless form or chaotic organization, and it is difficult to pin down the specific targets of ridicule.' End of paraphrase.

In Ancient Menippean Satire by Joel C. Relihan, the author examines the traits of Menippean satire which include a mx of incongruous elements such as verse and prose, high and low styles, serious and comic, the moral and the erotic, etc. and it is offered to the reader by a narrator who is himself parodied, along with his quest for philosophical knowledge. Authors who have written in the Menippean style include Chaucer and Petronius Arbiter.

Menippean satire is inclusive, rather than having the exclusive tone of Juvenalian satire. The narrator (Truss) includes herself in the rank and file of human beings and isn't set on high as judge of 'others'. It is easier to accept criticism from a person who shows us her own imperfections, whether real or fictional.

There's this constant, and deliberate, seesaw of emotions - 'let's not go to extremes with either purity of grammar or the slipshod' and then followed by a type of 'where's my gun?' thought.

Marvelle

The name Land's End is meaningful to those many GI's who gathered there shortly before crossing the channel on June 6, 1944.

Robby

But without the stats one can't tell if it is really a malapropism or not. After all, the Cubs' manager may be wishing for consistently great pitching, against rather good pitching, in which case 'apparition' might be appropriate, particularly in sporting language. Besides, it is rather more positive hoping it is not an apparition than hoping it is not an aberration. Hmmm. Is it? This one is going to haunt me.

"He once listed horrible writing examples, including this one submitted by me: "The Cubs' manager is hoping that last year's pitching performance by Mike Bielecki was not an apparition". Kilpatrick's column pointed out that the word should be spelled aberration."

The most wicked and fun thing about Truss' satire is how well she gets us all caught up in it--we are throwing down gauntlets and picking up swords right and left. I'm not certain everyone reading the book has caught the satire, though. This is sadly, one of the least fun things about satire: having no one to share it with.

However, brilliant satire does this to the reader: gets you caught up in the action. You want to take sides with Truss and be equally indignant about those greengrocers' apostrophes. And you forget to laugh at her and yourself when she starts fighting with guns and knives. We are reading Sinclair Lewis' Main Street in my on-line book club this month. It's exactly the same thing in there. We're oh-so-serious discussing the book, and the small town, and its savior charging forth. And it is delightful fun to get caught. Whatever we conclude about Truss, this woman is having fun doing what she does.

Kleo

Robby, thanks for the reminder.

Kleo

Do we all think that this IS satire? Thank you for that Marvelle, I am not acquainted with that type of satire, have read Horace and Juvenal, but never heard of the other, let's put that question in the heading, do you all think this is satire, and if not, what do you think it is?

What do you think she is doing here?

What actually IS the definition of satire, I can see there are several types, I think that's a good question and a very good point!

How language moves, expands and changes is always a wonder for me. Especially the English language. When I first typed letters in the office the proper ending for any business letter in French was:

"Veuillez agréer, monsieur, l'expression de mes sentiments distingués"

It was so familiar to me that I could write it with my hands tied behind my back so to speak. Then it changed to "Bien à vous", (Yours truly). That is if they still mail business letters, but now emails and faxes are saving time spent typing it and sending it through the mail.

I don't know if we can stop the new language, which looks like shorthand to me, from spreading, I am afraid it is going to get worse before it gets better and it will soon be accepted in business.

Young people forge their own future with their own tools relegating our way of communicating to the archives of literature which they will study in school as 'history'. They will say, "In the olden days, people used to write like that, imagine". It might change the spoken language too, in fact I think it has already started to change.

Eloïse

Oh good point Eloise, that was just one of the things I, too, was about to ask, about change.

You all have done a wonderful job, it's joy to read. What do you think of someo f these topics and are there any you'd like to raise, yourself?

I've read all 81 posts and laughed out loud over your wonderful creative and charming takes on what the title meant, I think we should send them to her, she sure picked a good one, I think we should make a list, they are interesting and creative.

Theron I have appreciated the history of the acronym, I did not know that.

Louise in Miami and Andrea in Orlando, I hope you are safe, it looks awful.

I have also enjoyed what kind of Inner Stickler you all are, seems like we're off to a great start.

So would you say, then, that punctuation IS important, not only to those who edit, but to every person in their daily lives? I'm asking if punctuation itself actually has the power to change or enhance meaning of words, not just merely do something stupid that people laugh at or perhaps can feel good about remembering for 10 seconds (like Number 3, page 42).

I am not sure, either from reading the posts, that we spoke particularly about THIS medium? We are talking about email but how about this writing right here that we're doing, right here on SeniorNet? How is IT different from email, if it is, do you think? Which is more casual?

We read a book here in the Book Club Online some time ago, called All is Vanity , with the author, Christina Schwarz, and IT was about the faces people put on in email, and the way they choose to represent themselves online, and until she mentioned it, I had never ever thought that email OR this expression online could actually be….not the same or done for effect.

So IS punctuation, the !!!! (which almost seems necessary online to express excitement, right?) and the ;-0 something new, something important and part of a NEW way, not only of communicating but of producing a new persona online or in email?

I was quite struck by what Christina Schwarz said, about how it was pointed out to her how easy it WAS to fake a persona in email.

Of the three kinds of letter writing, the formal letter, the email and this type of internet conversation that we're having here, which one, do you think, comes closest to the real YOU?

AND how much of a role does punctuation play if at all in YOUR own presentation of yourself to the world?

Is it manners or a question of knowing or is it something more?

Let's ask some other questions now that we have 3 days left before we move on to the nest part:

Do you believe there is such a thing as the Apostropher Royal? It appears if there is such a person he is concerned with dashes and colons (page 48). Why would that be? What IS the most misused punctuation mark, would you say?

(I know which one drives me the craziest but I'm waiting till Week 4 and our much anticipated Pet Peeves to unload that one).

Didn't you love the history of the full stop and the period? The invention of the capital letter to start every sentence in the 14th century? Who KNEW?

The Oxford comma? I can't wait to get to that section.

This woman knows a LOT, and she's using a lot of spoonfuls of sugar to make this medicine go down, do you think it's deliberate?

Colkot, something we've asked in every discussion we've had, absolutely NOBODY seems to know! YOU will finally tell us! What is an A Level and an O Level? I would really like to know. I know it's some kind of exam but what does it mean, which is better, what will they get you? Please explain!!

Marvelle, thank you for those dead words definition and the seventh sense, that's interesting, we're learning a lot in this one, about a lot of things.

She's pretty firm on pages 38 and 39 about the history of the apostrophe and Love-His-Labour-Is-Lost being bunk. I had never heard that except on SeniorNet, which is it, true or false? Which historian of grammar can we trust? And what basis do we have FOR making a decision?

Truss uses acronyms herself: what's a CV?

Wouldn't it be interesting to see the sudden emergence of the tilde (~) as Truss suggests is about to take place with folio~s.

The list of what "those of us sickened by the state of apostrophe abuse" need to do (page 65) is quite interesting:

We must take up arms. Here are the weapons required in the apostrophe war (stop when you start to feel uncomfortable):

Isn't there some punctuation missing in that sentence or is it just me? At any rate, that list makes a very telling point. The apostrophe is a small thing. Does it really matter how it's misused? What nations will fall if the apostrophe is misused? After all, it was once correct to say folio's and it was once correct to drink from your saucer, so maybe it's a change for the better? Wouldn't it be better to ride with the new wave and not fight it determinedly?

It's been pointed out to me by one of our sharp eyed readers, that Ms. Truss has made a mistake, herself. One of those concerns the Twin Towers, on page 7:

..and we got very worked up after 9/11 not because of Osama bin-Laden but because people on the radio kept saying "enormity" when they meant "magnitude," and we really hate that.

oops there's that word hate again.

Now do you see anything wrong with her statement there?

And finally, "Aldus the Younger…declared in 1566 that 'the main object of p[punctuation was the clarification of syntax.'" (page xii)

OK it's your turn, what would YOU say in 2004 is the main object of punctuation?

ha'penny for your thoughts?

I thought the book was "tongue in cheek" and had a lot of fun with reading it. As to Polish, I'm well aware of the Latin grammar and how to pronounce and spell. I'm living proof of the fact that you can read Polish if you know how to pronounce it.In 1966, the Brit (me) sang in Polish as part of a choir at Soldier Field for the 1000 years of Polish Christianity Celebration. What an experience! For a change, my husband and children were watching Mama perform. He ran Polish Dance groups here in Chicago for many,many years.. three generations of students, of all ages.We performed for the Pope in 1979..and also with the Chicago Symphony.. that's how 2 of my kids started(& continue today) in show biz. Colkot

JONATHAN, you are right, of course. The comma was missing from my post. The phrase should have read "the late comma great Ann Landers".

+++

KLEO, I've heard of 'Mongolic' (adj.) which describes a group of languages spoken in the former Mongolian People's Republic, like Buriat and Khalkha . But my knowledge antedates the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Did your friend's difficulty with English articles amount to the OMISSION of the article(s)? That I find easy to understand. However, the English article per se is the simplest thing in the world: irrespective of gender, singular or plural of nouns, amd any other grammatical variable, it is always, ALWAYS "THE". What could possibly be difficult about that?

You had better not get me started on "lie" vs "lay", or I may seriously ruffle feathers.

GINNY, regarding your question:

I don't believe the book is satirical. In fact, I'm certain the author herself does NOT think of her work as "satire". From the jacket we know that she is a journalist, obviously one who practices her craft conscientiously, has an intimate knowledge of and loves the English language, AND has the courage of her convictions.

In other words, Truss is well intentioned, I believe, and dead serious in her attempt to "reform the careless", futile though this effort may be. When I first laid eyes on the book, I felt that Truss is (1) fighting a losing battle and (2) might have done a world of good IF she had expanded her book to include common grammatical mistakes rather than limit herself to punctuation - and in such an often ill-tempered manner at that.

I consider the absence of an index in this book as a regrettable omission.

I read in a review of this book that the problem in the sentence cited was that Truss did not actually know the correct meanings of the words magnitude and enormity. I'll go try to find that again and post it.

EDIT:

Link to source of item below

Now ignoring the curious impression this creates of Truss's value scheme, she is quite wrong to take umbrage here: "Enormity", in British English, means "extreme wickedness". The magnitude and the awfulness of an act of mass murder are closely correlated. So, even in British English, it is perfectly right to talk of the "enormity" of September 11. But if any of the voices Truss heard on the radio were American, they had another excuse. In American English enormity *does* mean "magnitude". Since Truss is so enamoured with appeals to authority, it is odd she didn't check that with the best authority on American English, Webster's dictionary.

I think punctuation is the same as the traffic signals we use to make some order on our highways. People spew forth their ideas, and without punctuation it can be a garble. Punctuation is used in written language only, Victor Borge's "oral punctuation" not withstanding, to attempt to bring order to what otherwise would be word chaos.

Imagine any printed document without any punctuation? AACCKK!

jane

I think punctuation is for the reader. It points out, in fairly subtle ways, how to read the sentence. Commas and semicolons are especially helpful, as are periods.

This isn't satire; it is humorous, and Kolcot has the tone down when she says that Truss is "tongue-in-cheek." When you come right out and criticize something, as Truss does here, satire is not involved. Truss is having fun with her subject.

I have a colleague who freaks whenever he sees it's used as a possessive. He has in the past put posters from the men's locker room that have "it's" misused.

Personally, I don't think the apostrophe is long for the world. It will outlast me, but in a hundred years or so, no one is going to recognize one (except for scholars who are fish of a different school).

Commas, on the other hand, are extremely useful and my students still care about them.

Has anyone ever read Riddley Walker? It a wonderful book set in the future (after the BOMB). People can no longer read and write and the book is written by one of them, Riddley himself.

~Maryal

Actually, "the" isn't the only English article. "A" is another. "The" is definite, "a" indefinite. For example, you may see a dog across the street (indefinite since it could be any dog or because you've never mentioned it before)but once you've mentioned the animal, it becomes "the" dog. So it's not as simple as just adding "the" before nouns when you're switching to English from a language that doesn't use articles.

What fascinates me in working with language disordered children, is that most seem to pick up these nuances without instruction once they begin to talk. I don't think I've ever had to work on articles with a child, whereas I've spent hours and hours on pronouns and verb tenses.

And a comment about the tone of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. IMHO (Wow! I've never used that acronym before but I couldn't resist it.) it's definitely tongue-in-cheek.

I just got the book this afternoon, so I'm not quite caught up with all of you. I'm enjoying the humor and my vote also is for "tongue-in-cheek." (Oh dear me, did I do that the English or the American way?) It's a funny book and I've been ROTFL.

I do not understand why folks have such a problem with its/it's and other apostrophes. It's not difficult. Guess I should be grateful to my junior high teachers because all we did was work on grammer. Some would probably say, "Too bad you didn't spend more time on writing."

Ginny asked an interesting question comparing writing for email and writing here on SeniorNet. I think the writing here is a casual kind of writing and aside from capitalization and full stops I don't worry too much about punctuation. I consider our posts here conversational, so mine usually end up with too many dashes and parentheses. I'm mainly interested in "speaking" clearly, quickly -- and avoiding use of passive voice. No, not because of a teacher, MS WORD Spellcheck. (How should that sentence have been punctuated? As for email, how I write it depends on the purpose of the message.

I think the worst statement I ever heard from an adult came from one of the office personnel at our board of education office. I was questioning how something should be filled out and was told, "It don't make me no difference."

makes perfect sense where I come from. Wouldn't have raised nary an eyebrow, or slowed the flow of conversation one bit.

Marvelle, I just love it when you talk like that (post #78). It's a pleasure to read your posts.

Everybody. Keep it up. I'm really enjoying this.

Howzat

I think that punctuation makes a difference, Ginny, but not necessarily the punctuation taught in grammar books. Over my lifetime I have done a considerable amount of public speaking so when I write, subconsciously (sometimes consciously) I write with the same intention of being clear as I do when I speak.
I could write the sentence:-(note my dash after the colon) "He is a dog lover who doesn't care if it is a poodle, a terrier, or a St. Bernard." I assume that that is the correct way. I might find myself writing:- "He is a dog lover who doesn't care if it is a poodle -- a terrier -- or a St. Bernard." In speaking, I would pause between the names of the dogs. To me clarity and/or emphasis is more important that the "proper" punctuation.

Robby

I'm behind in my reading, but just came to the part about the Royal Apostropher this morning and had a hearty chuckle for the first time in weeks. It isn't often I find a book that makes me laugh aloud, but I love her tale of the Royal Apostropher and Apostrophe Thursday and the splitting of "unwanted inverted commas." [American rules for me on end punctuation. ;0)]

jane

I'm just catching up, and noticed Ginny's question on the use of CV. That appears to be LATIN ! CV is curiculum vitae, or in the more common American usage, resume. Especially for academics, it's mostly a list of jobs and of publications, as long as possible, of articles, books, book reviews, and everything but the kitchen sink to enhance the list.

I agree that Truss is serious; sometimes so serious that she doesn't see the fun in informal writing. I think our posts on SeniorNet should be informal -- and should be fun!

hahaha LATIN? ahahahah REALLY? Websters says it's an abbreviation for convertible! hahahaha I have never seen "CV!!!" I have seen "vita," but then again, I've been retired for 25 years, so it's not been something I've been concerned with, I can't WAIT to spring that on somebody. We're ALL learning something here!

You live and learn, thank you, Mippiana!

I think you've all made some great comments and I think your opinions on whether or not Truss is serious are quite interesting. I wish I had time to make a chart of comparison of our opinions. Traude, you find her dead serious in her attempt, and so you think the humor is….? For what purpose if any?

But now wait, you feel she is using "such an often ill-tempered manner" so you are finding some of her more extreme expressions aggressive rather than funny?

I think I agree with you about adding grammatical mistakes rather than limiting herself to punctuation, but then, again, she's made a killing with this thing as is.

jane, hahahaa (did you know about CV? Am I the only doofus on earth who did not? Latin, on top of it! I kept thinking of the drugstore chain…you never know when you've lost it until you've lost it) ahahaha

Thank you for the "magnitude and enormity" explanation, that was Reader Sandy who brought that to my attention, I paused over it but not long enough (being in a hurry to get it read) to light. I am glad to see our own reader's opinions validated!

Hahaa on the Astronomer Royal, only the British, they are so fabulous! Where else would a gardener be awarded a trophy for a turnip? THAT'S a very special place.

Ok so you think punctuation is the same as the traffic signals we use to make some order on our highways Are you talking about good punctuation? What of the misuse of punctuation to add detours to thought?

Imagine any printed document without any punctuation? AACCKK! hahahah DARE I say the Romans managed pretty well? Hahaahaha CV!! CV!! I absolutely despise abbreviations! How many people know what May Day stands for? Hmmm?

Deems, (Maryal), (did you know about CV? Hahahaha) Personally, I don't think the apostrophe is long for the world. It will outlast me, but in a hundred years or so, no one is going to recognize one (except for scholars who are fish of a different school). REALLY? Not last? Are there any other marks of punctuation you think might die? I fear for the lovely semi colon, one of my favorites. People always use the colon (and don't know how) but not the semi colon correctly and it's SOOOO (its soooo) hahaha easy. CV!!

LOL@@ (I always think that means Lots of Love)!

Has anyone ever read Riddley Walker? It a wonderful book set in the future (after the BOMB). People can no longer read and write and the book is written by one of them, Riddley himself. NOOO, do we need to read this for a future discussion, sounds like my kinda book!

Your students still care about commas? What's the least popular punctuation mark among your students? The apostrophe?

Cat Woman, oh how interesting on the a or the and the mentioning it before, I didn't know that (have I lived under a rock all this time?!?) hahahaaha since it could be any dog or because you've never mentioned it before)but once you've mentioned the animal, it becomes "the" dog. I did NOT know that!

And you see her as definitely tongue-in-cheek. What does that mean, exactly?

pedln, you need no trepidation here, you're among CV's! hahahaha . I'm enjoying the humor and my vote also is for "tongue-in-cheek." OK there you go too, tongue in cheek, what is the etymology of that expression?

Oh this is an interesting point: I consider our posts here conversational, so mine usually end up with too many dashes and parentheses. OK so this is like conversation transcribed then? We're talking here as if we would talking face to face? That's interesting, what do the rest of you think?

howzat, hahaha on Don't make me no difference The Best Use of the Double Negative I've heard is "Don't never throw nothing away."

Robby, ) OK so you seem to agree with Pedln on our use of the boards here: conversational? I write with the same intention of being clear as I do when I speak. but hist! Why do you use a dash after the colon??

Ok now Mippy raises a good point: agree that Truss is serious; sometimes so serious that she doesn't see the fun in informal writing. OK OK, now let's ask ourselves , IS there a time in your writing, EVER, when you can relax INTO informality? Does Truss seem to think punctuation aids your expression in formal, informal or any sort of writing?

So if it's an AID to writing then why would you not use it all the time? If you see it as an additional burden or hindrance then the free part would not apply? Does this make any sense??

I'm kind of torn about the TONE of this book, which is what we're currently discussing, among other things. She's serious, as a crutch, so what's all that humor doing in there? Is it mean spirited or is she simply just funny and it's all bubbling out? Is some of it forced? Does some of it not work? Penny for your thoughts!@

Ginny:-I get letters all the time asking for my CV.
Notice the difference between Ginny:I get and Ginny:-I get. It furnishes more space and is merely an idiosyncracy of mine. I assume that word has a Latin derivation?

Robby

"She's serious, as a crutch, so what's all that humor doing in there? Is it mean spirited or is she simply just funny and it's all bubbling out? Is some of it forced? Does some of it not work? Penny for your thoughts!@ "

I feel that some of it is forced. She is trying to be funny, but it becomes mean-spirited. I've run into this in several other books lately, and I think the problem is this: if I only laugh at other people and never laugh at myself, no matter how funny I am, I leave a bad taste in the readers mouth. It becomes a game of "let's you and me get him."

Robby, do you really? That shows you what being retired does for you hahaaa (or maybe living under a rock, who knows). Yes curriculum vitae is definitely Latin. I have NEVER seen that CV, I can't wait to unleash myself on my poor unsuspecting husband who is bombarded with them day and night, the economy being what it is, or my children.

The COLON with a DASH!!!???!!!??? sheesh. I won't take it up now, because she takes it up starting the 8th. (Wait till you see what she says!_ And I am overjoyed to see we finally get to my favorite punctuation mark on earth, the semi-colon!!!! Why don't you just hit space twice??

(And, knowing YOU I am braced for what I KNOW is coming!) hahahaha

Joan, what an interesting point! if I only laugh at other people and never laugh at myself, no matter how funny I am, I leave a bad taste in the readers mouth. It becomes a game of "let's you and me get him."

I asked that question, because, having started the book laughing hysterically, I found a couple of places where it was VERY forced, to me, one of them in the part on page 65, where she's listing the arms we must take up, which I've already posted to. It stuck in my mind, but for a different reason than I posted it initially:

...we must take up arms. Here are the weapons required in the apostrophe war (stop when you start to feel uncomfortable):

correction fluid
big pen
....guerrilla-style clothing
strong medication for personality disorder
loudhailer....

That one went wrong,(what's a loudhailer?), or so I thought, and I could not figure out why. I had NOT noticed that her humor is not aimed at herself!!!! Had any of you? I must reread again and pay more attention in this next section, let's all look for it!

English Teachers Alert!! I do believe that that sentence starting with "here" and ending with "uncomfortable" lacks important punctuation!!??!! What do you think??

Great point, Joan K!!

Sorry, Ginny, but I knew the meaning of CV. It's been in use for a long, long time.

I found the book to be a light-hearted, humorous look at a subject that the author finds serious enough to write about. Obviously, it's not a life-and-death subject. Personally, I find punctuation important, even in informal communication. We certainly use it while talking, even though it's accomplished with pauses and phrasing. I never got into reading archibald macleish because of his non-use of capital letters; (there's that lovely semi-colon, correct or not) and I felt the same about Henry Miller, because of his non-use of quotation marks.

hahhahaah Mary, you mean I can't even use the retired excuse? hahahaha Well I'll use the rock excuse then. hahahaaha Love it, just love it!

Now YOU raise a good point and that's authors whose deliberate (?) use or misuse of punctuation distracts the reader! Now Maryal said, (I hope it was she) that punctuation IS for the reader?

All right, so when an author deliberately makes a hash of it, for a reason, but it turns the reader off, then.....what are we saying about why people write books (I had written ars gratia artis here, but considering the rock thing I think I would be better to leave it out? hahaha)

A whole new area!!! Punctuation as a hindrance to reading! That rings a lot of bells with me, there are others who leave off quotation marks, lots of them?

I have enjoyed reading the comments about this book. I think the purpose of punctuation is to clearly convey our thoughts to the reader. Without punctuation, the meaning can be misunderstood. Judy

STIGLER!! I wondered where you were (did YOU know what CV was? hahahaha I don't think ANYBODY now is going to admit they did not!)

OK now Judy is giving #12 a stab, so you think that it's to clearly convey our thoughts so we are not misunderstood? OK well then, do YOU think that punctuation should be used in all types of writing, correctly, formal, informal, email?

Can't wait to hear what you think of the other topics here, welcome back!

I hate to admit it, but I knew what CV was. I always say that everything I know, I know from reading detective stories. CV is used a lot in British ones.

It depends upon who is making the request. If the request is coming from a university or research outfit or some academic center, the use of CV is not unusual.

Robby

Joan, really? hahaaha I read a LOT of British mysteries! (obviously under a rock!)

CV CV CV I shall brand THAT one on my forehead. LOL CV IMHO ROTFLOTORLEOFHTOUER, hahahahaa FBI IBM CBS hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Let's , I tell you what? This calls for a PENALTY, I call out the PENALTY!!

Let's walk the plank here and ONLY converse in acronyms for the rest of today?

OK?

CV,

HU NU?

IMHO: POC hahaahaha

LOL

CUL8R! haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

ROBBY:

TYVM

TANSTAAFL

TANSTAAFL I understand as I always have to pay for my own.
However, sometimes I BMOB.

Robby

Uh, Truss is not laughing at herself when she says she needs medicine for mental health as a weapon? How is she not laughing at herself when she includes herself?

"we must take up arms. Here are the weapons required in the apostrophe war (stop when you start to feel uncomfortable):

correction fluid big pen ....guerrilla-style clothing strong medication for personality disorder loudhailer....

.... I had NOT noticed that her humor is not aimed at herself!!!! "

Notice the 'we?' Usually the first person plural is taken to include the speaker, also. The person speaking! Uh, so, if it's 'not aimed at herself' and she uses 'we' just whom is it aimed at? How is 'strong medicine for personality disorder' to be taken as not poking fun at herself when she clearly indicates that she is in the group that needs it?

"Deadly serious?" Then she should be in jail for threatening to shoot people!

Thanks for the note on articles--there are too many unread notes to go back. Yes, this is the confusion. Scientific writing is different from other types in a number of ways, one being that it is not always so clear how to use articles. Even literate native English speakers often mess up. It's so easy to mess up articles in English that many non-native speakers think that 'the' is the only article. I have had a number of students say this to me when I tell the story about an educated man who has difficulties with articles, "What's so hard about using 'the?'"

Web bulletin boards (this medium of exchange) are, to me, both more and less formal than email. They are more formal than email to friends and less formal than business email of any kind.

A loudhailer is a bullhorn, I assume. CV is and has been the common usage in academic circles for just about all of time. I, too, come across it frequently in British murder mysteries.

Fun reading today. Thanks to everyone for all of the notes.

More tomorrow.

Kleo

I would guess from the context that a loud hailer is a megaphone of some sort. You know those Brits, they gotta have a different name for some items to prove that they aren't Amuricans who have ruined their language.

As for CV, yep it's the full name of a vita. These days it's the preferred name. Who knows why.

Okay, Ginny. In answer to your question about the meaning of "tongue-in-cheek," I googled it. Here's what I found:

From Dictionary.com Meant or expressed ironically or facetiously Or--clearly amusing in tone; in a bantering fashion

From KidsHealth.org This funny-sounding expression indicates that someone just told a joke or isn't being serious...It's believed that this saying was created by an English humorist in the 1800s. Most people have difficulty saying anything with their tongue in their cheek. But some people actually do stick their tongue against the inside of their cheek after saying a joke, to show that they're only kidding.

From Idiomsite.com To keep yourself from laughing at a bad time, you can thrust your tongue into your cheek. Back in the 1700's, this was used to signal contempt for another person. Over the years the meaning changed to be more humor related.

By the way, I copied these and just noticed that KidsHealth uses 1800s without an apostrophe and Idiomsite uses 1700's with an apostrophe.

I have nothing against our discussion leader, but I find his/her interminable 13-item screen-cluttering guidance or whatever entitled, "For Your Consideration" to be insufferable baggage. Goodbye.

A better translation would be "loud speaker," I think.

What ticked you off, Rambler, honey? GINNY probably works harder than anyone I know to keep these Books and Literature discussions one of the very best sites on the web.

Count your blessings, and be grateful that we have this SeniorNet Books and Literature site and her.

Mal

I stand corrected -- I was too harsh on the author. But I do feel as much crabbiness as humor coming through.

I didn't know it was possible not to like Ginny. Her messages are so long because she has something encouraging and appreciative to say about every single post, even when there are jillions of them! I for one really appreciate and look forward to that. If you don't have time to read it all, you can skip til you come to the paragraph where she is talking about you, and go away feeling good. (Of course, I would never do that!)

"A work that uses ridicule, humor, and wit to criticize and provoke change in huma nature and institutions." - from The Gale Group

Merriam-Webster defines sarcasm as " an intentional inflicting of pain by deriding, taunting, or ridiculing" and states that satire "implies that the intent of the ridiculing is censure and reprobation".

In post 78 I stated the criteria for Menippean satire which is that the author or narrator is included in the laughter at human failings. Truss is laughing at herself.

Look at the pattern of writing though when Truss makes extreme statements throughout the book. She arms herself in her with war against punctuation misuse and starts with moderation and ends over the top.

Truss first says 'keep things in proportion and don't go overboard' and then she immediately leaps overboard.

Look at that splash she made! leaping from correction fluid, to pen, to medication, to loudhailer, to GUN.

That is carefully thought out and an example of classic Menippean satire. Truss does this over and over again with her stories. Her self-parody takes the sting out of her remarks even as I think 'well, maybe I'll treat the apostrophe with a little more tenderness than usual.' Then again, habits are hard to break.

Marvelle

Thank you Malryn and Joan, aren't you kind!

Pat has done us a new heading, Rambler, sorry that you found the questions for discussion focus insufferable.

I think you're right Kleo, and I was wrong in that instance. Her entire method of approach in that section really bothers me...and was on my mind, the stop when you start to feel uncomfortable...I REALLY dislike that, I am not sure why.

hahaha is HELP an acronym, Joan? Hahahaah

Wasn't it interesting, for those who tried it yesterday, how limiting those acronyms really ARE, and IF they are that limiting why limit your own conversation with them? I ask? I was surprised, myself.

I'm so GLAD this came up, because this issue has raised a huge new thing, and I've struggled with it half the night, trying to figure out what, IN FACT, she is doing and IF the humor she is using allows her to get away with it...(and I think it comes close). It seems to me her humor presupposes a certain mindset by the reader...and the reader may have to want to BE in the inner sanctum or Inner Stickler circle before it will work. Otherwise he'd dismiss her as the anal retentive dinosaur she fights against being seen as?

Here I come IN here this morning, still trying to struggle out my own take on it (and what fun to even try), and see Marvelle developing something on the same theme though with a different slant (satire)...

First off, Joan, I don't think you were "too hard" on her. Anybody who starts a book off ridiculing somebody who came to see her to the extent of the…"and oh dear, I don't know how to wash my hair, either," is definitely setting up a we/they thing.

I mean, how we normal humans act in the face of celebrity is sometimes astonishing, and very few of us, including celebrities, themselves, are free of this burden. There are some hilarious stories when one giant celebrity in one field meets another, and says the most inane things. It happens to most of us, and all we can do is HOPE that the object of our veneration is a good enough person to forgive or excuse us. I'm the world's worst, so I sympathize.

She says she kept smiling, and obviously she felt derision, and now we all know. I don't look on that as kindness or particular sweetness of spirit.

Some of us see her as tongue in cheek and CAT WOMAN!! What a fabulous background on "tongue in cheek" you found for us, how interesting. Thank you! Isn't there some culture where putting a finger TO your cheek or ….wait….putting a finger to the side of your nose (Italy?) denotes something? The Night Before Christmas, in fact, "and putting a finger …what? Aside of his nose/and giving a nod, up the chimney he rose?"

When I was a child and read that I had no earthly idea what that was, even tried to act that out, to figure out what he was doing, and what it might have meant, was THAT the same thing?

Oh and I LOVED this: " b>Back in the 1700's, this was used to signal contempt for another person. Over the years the meaning changed to be more humor related. Isn't that strange?

And this was super, don't you find that the minute you start reading a book you see references to it everywhere?

By the way, I copied these and just noticed that KidsHealth uses 1800s without an apostrophe and Idiomsite uses 1700's with an apostrophe.

THANK you for those things!

Now here Marvelle this morning is making a point that has plagued me a bit. Marvelle kept saying in our discussion here that Truss urges moderation, but I kept thinking I have never seen a book in which lack of moderation over such an insignificant topic is used to such wild effect: in the verbs and the word descriptions, I mean, really, "you deserve to be struck by lightening, hacked up on the spot, and buried in an unmarked grave." (44).

"First we must refute the label 'dinosaurs" ( I really hate that). And second, we must take up arms." (65) "Some of us cannot suppress actual screams." (5) (This, in reference to something she herself was incorrect about). Hahaaha (Life does have such a way, doesn’t it? What goes around, REALLY comes around, I fear for this young woman, she's going to really get it back someday). Humorously, I’m sure.

So there's a lot of "do as I say and not as I do," everything in moderation: wait while I show the opposite, (as Marvelle has just so well pointed out about the GUN,) and it's not about education, but…………I thought this was interesting, appearing in a book specifically not about education, "and also to the justifiable despair of the well educated in a dismally illiterate world."

This is quite a little book here. I haven't figured out what she is doing?!? Humor is an interesting topic, also. Sometimes humor is used as a tool to get other things.

If I'm going to write a book and tell other people the "right" way to do things, things they do every day? If I am going to be the authority, how can I write a book and lecture people on the right and wrong way of doing things? Why would they listen to me? Will I use a kind of cutting edge British humor, and add sort of a Monty Python-esque scenarios, or maybe throw in a dash of Fawlty Towers in my characterizations? By calling myself an Inner Stickler and inviting YOU into my select, elect group, can I get AWAY with making fun (and that's what she's doing) of others? Will people see this as satire? Will they side with ME or THEM? Will they see my undeniable humor as good natured? As tongue in cheek? As mean spirited? I'm being mean, there's no doubt about it, but did I get away with it?

This discussion has taken a fascinating turn, away from us, and our own usage and experiences, (but we'll definitely come back to them in week 4), and square on the author herself, and the way she expresses herself.

As we read the next section, let's watch, in addition to discussing commas, colons, semi-colons, (don't you long to know the history of the word colon ?), and other things, (love the chapter titles, "That'll Do, Comma," and "Airs and Graces,"), let's each watch for what we think the author might be doing, and how she does it, so we can each, at the end, having truly looked hard, make our own informed determination of the TONE of the book. Love it!

Let's ask ourselves this: WHY would a small book on the right way to...the RIGHT way to punctuate, be such a best seller in 2004?

"WHY would a small book on the right way to….the RIGHT way to punctuate, be such a best seller in 2004?"

I think one reason why the book has become such a best seller is because of the insecurity most of us feel when it comes to grammar and punctuation. Even as I write this, I hope that my words are spelled correctly and that I haven't made any glaring errors in punctuation!

Judy

Stigler, an excellent answer, we really, if we only had the time (or space) should put up everybody's answers to that one, but wait? WHY would you care about what it looks like when you post here?

(I am thinking this goes back to question #9 in the heading, perhaps, not sure but why would you be conscious particularly of how you write HERE?)

And after some thought, WHY do we feel insecure? WHY do we care at all? Do YOU each care how you type or appear here? And if so, why?

Most of us travel under a psuedonym, (or ; or

but we all get to know each other and want to put the best spin (slang?) on what we write.

I think I'd have more respect for Truss and this book if she wasn't so cute with language in her rant. Yes, I think this book is a rant.

I sometimes think people buy a book because so and so bought it, and that particular so and so bought it because it's on the best seller list. In other words, I think there's a kind of indiscriminate sheep tendency here.

As far as these posts are concerned, well, when we go to town we usually put our best foot forward; at least make sure our clothes are neat and pressed and our hair is combed, and our face and hands are clean. That makes no difference here where we can't see each other, so we compensate with words and how we write and punctuate them.

We are aware that someone might see us when we leave the house, and we are aware that someone's going to read what we write on these message boards. What we write here expresses our personalities and who we are.

I suppose many of us would like to look the best we can on them. Others hide behind anonymity to make cracks and take digs at people. Still others play games, flirt and generally behave in ways they might not in real time, face-to-face situations.

As far as I'm concerned, grammar and punctuation are a big part of my life as an editor, leader of a writer's group and writer. I'm very aware of these things, perhaps more than most people, and cringe when I post mistakes, and it's too late to correct them.

Yes, I edit posts, just as I edit letters, stories, essays and novels I write. That's the great difference between typing words into a computer and having a conversation with someone you meet on the street, or with whom you go out to lunch. Once you say something, it's said, and there's absolutely no way to edit or revise it.

Mal

You'd be surprised how self-conscious people become when either writing or speaking is the TOPIC of conversation or discussion. All my life I have experienced the unease of others; I think I can explain.

I teach English. My profession almost inevitably comes up in social occasions. Say I'm at a party where I know only the host. I mingle. I introduce myself. The new person and I chat. Pretty soon we are discussing what we DO (since who we ARE is an unapproachable subject).

The other person says, "And what do you do?"

I used to answer, "I teach English."

Other person has THREE possible responses--
"O, I loved English."
"English wasn't my best subject."
"What grade do you teach?"

That last one leads to my admitting that I teach in college at which point things get more sticky.

Generally the other person, upon learning that I teach in college, says, "O my; I'd better watch what I say!"

The assumption of that last remark is that instead of listening to what the other person says, I am running a constant grammar program in my head (my Inner Editor) and thinking such things as, Goodness, this person doesn't even know that between is a preposition. He/she said, "Just between you and I."

I do not do this. I am innocent. I do hear errors but I think nothing of them since so many people make them and I am most interested in the content of what I hear. As an extension of this disclaimer, I don't correct what my students SAY either. If I were to say, "That should be BROKEN, not BROKE, Kent," not only would I be rude, but half the class would decide that I was like all their previous English teachers, fussy and not relevant.

I think Truss uses humor, of the arch Brittish sort--Monty Python over the top--in order to write in an entertaining manner about a subject that is so dry that it almost self-immolates whenever it comes up.

And what is her chief subject? Punctuation, for heaven's sake. Something that just about everyone feels a little shakey about. Had she written a typical handbook, it would have sounded like all the other handbooks out there (trust me; there are MANY and they all sound about the same)--"Put a comma after an introductory element in a sentence." Typing that sentence almost puts me to sleep.

OUr language, the way we speak and write, is very close to us. It is part of who we are sort of like our hair and our teeth. It is natural that people feel a little unsettled when it becomes the focus of attention.

Truss uses humor to defuse the situation. For the most part, I think she carries it off. Sometimes she seems to me to be straining, but it is hard to be funny all the time.

Maryal

There is no question in my mind that even anonymous posters can and DO reveal a great deal about themselves and their personalities in casual posts and discussions. I believe very strongly that, over time, an attentive reader can spot preferences, inclinations, proclivities and more, even without the benefit of seeing a photo or hearing the voice.

As I've said already, I bought Truss's book based on the favorable review and was, frankly, disappointed when I starting reading it. The author comes across to me as impatient, indignant, sometimes caustic, judgmental. I can visualize her lecturing a group of, say, budding journalists in an impassioned voice, wildly gesticulating, and I can see the audience somehow shrinking under the onslaught.

Why is the book a bestseller? Clever publicity for one thing (Frank McCourt wrote the foreword for the American edition!), word of mouth of course and, last but not least, the herd instinct MAL mentioned: If everybody is talking about it, everybody has to buy it.

Truss's approach is too strong for me, and what pains me is not so much WHAT she says but HOW she says it. If anyone sees gentle humor in her exhortations, please show me where.

I don't mean to say we should ignore this book - in fact we could do worse than reviewing our own use of punctuation marks - but we should most certainly not feel intimidated either.

GINNY, curriculum vitae, totally literally "the course of one's life and carrier", is the common term in Europe. In my time NO application was complete WITHOUT a "vita", as we call it here. Furthermore, it had to be hand-written (!)(obviously to see what hidden personality traits the hand writing might graphologically reveal). I don't know to what extent these standard rules have since been relaxed in Germany, but I will check with my old school friend.

BTW the FBI now recognizes the value of graphology in establishing personality profiles.

Truss urges moderation and then deliberately behaves immoderately.

That's Menippean satire. Truss laughs at herself and others which isn't at all the same as pointing a sharpened pencil at someone else and laughing.

She says there are two types of people can kill the English language: purists and slipshods. Truss overtly jokes about the slipshods and also not-so-covertly jokes about the purists, including herself.

There are many types of humor and it is challenging to write it. Who do you (plural) think is funny?

Some people don't see humor in life which is too bad. I'm not fond of satire particularly as it's difficult to sustain consistently. Will she sustain and keep me as a reader? I am waiting for the dying fall in her style.

Marvelle

I agree. If Truss had written a punctuation handbook, no one would read it. But by making punctuation interesting, by being funny, annoying, over-the-top, she has brought to the forefront a subject that probably 99.9% of the population would never include in a conversation. Does it work? Well, this post is #128 in barely a week. Would we do that for the usual boring punctuation manual? Would we be discussing it at all? My point is that Truss's style (whatever you think it is) has made punctuation a subject worth discussing.

Yes. So far at least Truss has taken a dry topic and made it lively - from dead punctuation to a living language.

Marvelle

Truss' tone is manic though. She might be a melancholic personality which isn't unusual for a writer, especially a comic writer.

Shall we have some fun? Results of the following can be kept a secret.

Play the Punctuation Game

The above is from the publisher's website for the book at http://www.eatsshootsandleaves.com/ which also has a "Hall of Shame" of reader-contributions.

Marvelle

Boy, I guess I'm alone out here in left field. I'm enjoying this little book. I find her humor charming and her hyperbole delightful. I don't see anything yet that's mean or nasty. (I'm on p. 48.) She presents punctuation in a way that's educational and entertaining. Like others here, I've read more than my share of punctuation/style manuals...and "dry" is a compliment to those authors.

Why do I care about punctuation? Because I was fortunate enough to be a student in Mrs. Mary Jane Hodder's English 8 class at New Philadelphia Junior High School. Nobody sat in that class for more than 2 days and did not learn that punctuation was important! Mrs. Hodder was not as funny as Ms Truss, but Mrs. Hodder sure could teach. In her world punctuation was needed so that others could grasp the concepts you were trying to convey when you weren't there to do it orally. If you can't convey your ideas/concepts to others, you will be isolated and ineffective in communicating ideas however wonderful they might be.

Bless Mrs. Hodder; may she rest in peace.

jane

Why are we so much in a hurry? To me the shortcuts in speaking or writing saves useless time and takes away much of the harmony of words.

Time for what? Watching the news on television gives me a headache, I watch the anchor person and while he/she is taking other news is scrolling on a strip at the bottom of the screen saying something else is happening and my mind is racing trying to absorb both of them at the same time. I wonder if the brain is wired to do that?

The punctuation is in the tone of the voice, a slight drop indicates a full stop and a slight rise indicates a comma. A longer pause an exclamation point and a higher rise indicates fast action. I didn't realize until now that punctuation is also as important while speaking. I am just thinking aloud here and I don't know if I am making any sense.

We have a holy horror of a blank space, we talk fast, write fast, work fast and play fast. Everything has to have a shortcut. I have plenty of them on my desktop and I appreciate it, but if I read poetry, I have to make an effort not to read fast to try appreciating the images they evoke.

Eloïse

That is the absolute cutest game, I'm an 83% stickler! hahahhahaa

I'm right here standing in the field with you. I like the book, don't mind the tone, and find it fun to read.

Jane and Deems, I'm in your corner, too. I found the book delightfully funny when I first read it last summer, and am enjoying reading it again.

Ginny, I was 83%, too.

CAT WOMAN, I am not so sure "no one would read a handbook on punctuation."

Perhaps not a handbook SOLELY about punctuation, and with total disregard of other equally important points of grammar.

Therefore I repeat once more that

for instruction, for simple reading enjoyment and as an infallible guide in grammatical questions, I heartily recommend WOE IS I by Patricia T. O'Conner. It has 227 pages, which include the index. I believe so strongly in that book that I've given it to several friends. All loved it because it is a clear, simple, elegant, witty and - most of all - non-combative guide to good usage of English. FUN in capital letters.

For those truly interested in, and concerned about, preserving our precious (in some respects endangered,) language, the reading of O'Conner's book is indispensable in my opinion, especially as a balance to and a comparison with Truss and her lamentably single-minded preoccupation with punctuation.

92% stickler according to the game.

Eloise, you ask "What is my hurry?" Well at the moment I have a sick daughter that I have to be with tonight, am ill myself, and Theron's son and daughter-in-law are coming here tonight. They live in Crestview , Florida and are fleeing the hurricane.

Joan Grimes

Traude--I think the point is that a handbook would never become a best seller. Even with all the students out there who are required to buy one, it won't happen.

There currently are, and this is a conservative estimate, dozens and dozens of handbooks. Some of them are even quite good and fill their purpose well.

But this book was a best seller in England and has become a best seller in the USA. That indicates that many readers are picking up this book voluntarily not because it is a requirement for a course.

I've read Woe IS I and have no complaints about it except that there is so much it does not cover. I couldn't use it OR this book as a handbook for my classes.

After reading "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" I bought this book, "Woe is I" and find it much more readable and much easier to understand in the use of punctuation and grammar. She has an excellent index and also includes spelling.

As for as caring what anyone else thinks when they read what I type; I have been impressed with what I have read here and don't want to be considered an ignoramus.

Judy

It's not always about me. Sometimes it is about the person reading my letter. Abbreviations are not always a hurry. I'm not being polite if I needlessly repeat something the reader already knows. Computer abbreviations? When we chat in person, sometimes we just laugh, rather than saying, "That was very funny." By abbreviating our appreciation of the humor to a mere chuckle we are not hurrying the conversation on or rushing to cover otherwise blank space. In the sciences abbreviations are used a lot, they save space and they can make papers more readable.

That I use a shortcut or abbreviation does not mean that I use the time saved to watch television news.

Kleo

"It seems to me her humor presupposes a certain mindset by the reader...and the reader may have to want to BE in the inner sanctum or Inner Stickler circle before it will work. Otherwise he'd dismiss her as the anal retentive dinosaur she fights against being seen as? " Ginny

This is not true in my case. I am not an inner stickler. This is NOT a punctuation guide. It is not the be-all and end-all of English grammar. It is simply a funny little book about punctuation. It seems that scolding Truss for writing only about punctuation is like going to the Ford dealership and scolding them for not selling you a brand new Chevy. It's a humorous book about punctuation. We are certainly interested enough to spend a lot of time discussing it.

I'm a little uncertain, though, about why a college English professor would not correct her students' grammar in class. I've tutored students with English teachers who didn't correct them in class. They grow up to use those same mistakes in business situations where their bosses and colleagues judge them poorly because of their grammar. If your English teacher doesn't correct your spoken language, and you grew up in a home with your parents not knowing better, then where and when do you learn to speak correctly? My mother is taking a Spanish class and her teacher corrects the students' spoken English and Spanish. I tutor a lot of children of poor immigrants. They want to speak English well. Their parents want them to speak English well. Who teaches the ones who aren't lucky enough to have a tutor when their teachers don't correct them and their parents don't speak the language?

Kleo

I'm with those who consider this a funny little book. I'm enjoying Truss quite a bit.

Kleo

Kleo--Let me explain. If a student who is discussing, say, a short story says that something was broke, I wait until he/she is through speaking. I then comment on his comment, but I substitute BROKEN where he had BROKE.

For example, I might say, "So, Kent, you really think that Jill's heart was broken?"

I've had some success with this method. Often I notice a student who has been "corrected" in this subtle way will later use BROKEN when he makes another comment out loud. Eventually it gets through.

I have no bones to pick with teachers who constantly correct speech, but that's not my way. I want the students to think and to contribute to the discussion. I want them to care about what they have read.

When the mistake occurs in WRITING, I mark it and generally comment on the list of irregular verbs in the handbook, of which break is one.

My students come from all over the country. Many of them grew up hearing from their parents incorrect words, often the past participle of verbs. I've been teaching for some time now, and the problem is definitely getting worse.

And it's not just the parents; it's also TV. How many times have you heard a news anchor use LAYING when it should be LYING? Just today I heard an anchor refer to all the bodies of children that were laying on that gym floor in Russia.

First, another 92% here on the game. Also, points to the publisher for putting up a game! Will all books have games, eventually, with links to buy the book? Did everyone see that tag at the end?

I agree with Deems (#138) that a handbook would never be a best seller, or even make these boards as a discussion (do you agree?), but I still think Truss' tone is too strident, and I, for one, am never going to be as upset about stupid signs as she is.

I'm okay with this method, as the students benefit in both ways, first by hearing the correct English and, second, by being encouraged to express themselves in class. However, I don't consider this to be the same as '[thinking] nothing of [English errors].' You're hearing them, considering them, and providing correction by example. It's the same method I use with my ESL students. I use and respond with the correct usage of a word or phrase that has been mangled.

"I do hear errors but I think nothing of them since so many people make them and I am most interested in the content of what I hear. As an extension of this disclaimer, I don't correct what my students SAY either. If I were to say, "That should be BROKEN, not BROKE, Kent," not only would I be rude, but half the class would decide that I was like all their previous English teachers, fussy and not relevant."

However, I admit I wish I had more fussy and irrelevant English teachers. It always frustrated me that teachers taught to those so easily turned off by school. Only a few times in my life have I had teachers who taught to those who were there to learn. What a joy that was.

English and languages are tons of fun. It is not, however, fun to be taking an English class that is taught to the lowest common denominator when you like languages for the same reason you like math and computer languages: to dissect them, to analyze them, to play with them. When the teacher backs off all of the fun for the more interested students for fear of turning off the lazy students it means that those devoted to learning are no longer part of the education equation. This is why so many bright and gifted students drop out. This is why people like Ward Connorly think that grades and SAT scores can tell everything about a student--all the ones who had anything else to offer are burnt out by a system that doesn't acknowledge them. Sadly, the Connorly's of the world are getting their way and once great institutions are becoming mediocrity bastions.

Obviously this is a sore spot with me.

This discussion is making me really look at my thoughts in a number of areas.

Kleo

Ah, but the REAL fun begins with verbs whose participle differs from the past

begin, began, begun
drink, drank, drunk
ring, rang, rung
sing, sang, sung
sink, sank, sunk
spring, sprang, sprung
swim, swam, swum

bite, bit, bitten
hide, hid, hidden
bid, bade, bidden
give, gave, given

drive, drove, driven
ride, rode, ridden
rise, rose, risen
break, broke, broken
shake, shook, shaken

lie, lay, lain

command to a dog : LIE down, NOT "lay" down.

BUT lay, laid, laid.
"lay" requires an object, for example, "to lay the groundwork", or "lay down arms". (The list is not complete, of course.)

Traude--I have maybe had one student in the last ten years who could correctly use LAIN. Whn we look at the columns of irregular verbs, I always pause at LIE and LAY. We discuss them. Inevitable, someone asks about LAIN.

HUH? the student says.

They have never felt the need for it. They simply avoid the whole problem, writing something along the lines of "I had been in bed for two weeks before I called the doctor."

Fortunately, English has a huge vocabulary.

Goodness, MARYAL, I really didn't mean to go on so. This is simply the way we learned English verbs lo these many decades ago, and it all has stayed with me, ineradicably. I don't mean to sound dogmatic or pedantic, heaven forbid. But I will admit to having corrected my grandson, once or twice (but not lately), when he said, "Me and Paul...".

Now I will quietly climb down from my soap box, with apologies if I have offended anyone.

A trick I learned once to know when to use "lie" or "lay" is to remember that only people can "lie" (i.e., tell lies), so a book must "lay" on the table. I don't know that that holds true all the time, but it's a test I try to use.

Our family has already been grammar conscious - I always blame it (or give credit to) my mother. When our grands were little, and at times when the family was all together, if one of them made a grammatical error, i.e. "Me and John", corrections would be called out from all over the house by grandparents, parents, and aunts. The poor babies always looked so shocked to hear that in stereo - but it's always been good-natured. We even wound up occasionally with someone playing the "Grammar Cop" and handing out tickets. I was always the final arbiter, and woe be unto the one who made a "false arrest". Again - all done in good fun, but with learning as a side effect.

MARY Z, what a wonderful post! Thank you.

Traude--I meant no criticism, just following up on your list of irregular verbs and humming onto LAIN because students are becoming increasingly unaware of the distinctions between LIE and LAY.

Mary Z--It was like that at my house. I was corrected by Mother, Father, and Grandmother (who lived with us), not to mention sister who was nearly ten years older. The corection was always done with good humor, and the result was that by the time I was seven or so I made few errors in speech. I really think that good grammar begins in the home. Some of my students have not had that experience unfortunately.

These posts are a delight to read, and actually I'm only on post 139, reading on my brother's Chicago computer and ready to head a little further north into Wisconsin for two days. I'm no further in the book -- my big mistake -- I showed it to my brother and now he's reading it! Well, he'd better be done by tomorrow night when I get back.

Actually, I knew he'd want it. He liked "Woe is I," and reads lots of stuff like that that most of the time I wouldn't touch. We (he and I) have been having some great discussions about punctuation, but I won't include here his explanation of the three kinds of dashes.

Deems, I sympathize with your students writing outside the box, so to speak, in order to avoid making an error in punctuation or grammar. I never put enough effort into learning how to spell the word than means the opposite of being present, and would always write school excuses to the teacher as "Please excuse my son's being absent. . ."

Sorry to be away for a whils. After we returned from the Alabama Football weekend, there were many things that needed to be done around the house. Among them, getting the computer to properly boot up! We also had unexpected guests as my son and daughter-in-law chose to flee from Frances.
I have to go back and comment on a couple things. First, as a mechanic, I certainly knew what CV (Constant Velocity) stood for. That little, very special, joint is what allows the modern, front wheel drive car, to corner without shaking the steering wheel out of your hands.. )
Secondly, initials are not acronyms until they are generally accepted into usage by the affected group. Someone mentioned scientific papers using initials. They are generally defined with the first instance of usage so that the reader will recognize them when they are used throughout the paper. They do not become acronyms until most of the related community accepts that usage.
By the way, I find that I am a 92% stickler. That seems strange to me!!

Theron

Truss is funny and we're drawn into her war against punctuation abuse.

Goodness, punctuation is exciting! This reader interest and excitement about punctuation is the lasting good of such a book. It isn't intended to be an all-inclusive guide to writing.

Woe Is I isn't humorous, despite the funny title and sub-titles within the book. It doesn't read as smoothly as Eats, Shoots and Leaves, partly due to its lack of a narrative and its overall organizational scheme. It's a good book and intended for the U.S. market. It offers more tips than Truss' book but isn't an all-inclusive guide to writing.

I'll read Truss again because I know my excitement about punctuation will be refreshed whenever I open the book.

When I'm writing I use a few excellent grammar guides, such as Rules of Thumb by Silverman, Hughes, Roberts Wienbroer.

Marvelle

Is anyone familiar with mootgame.com? It's a fun website that focuses on word meanings, etymology, and sometimes grammar. Check it out.

In scientific papers you are generally required to define your abbreviations with your first usage whether they are accepted or not.

In general, though, you don't use unacceptable abbreviations in scientific writing, because science often define how you may use shortcuts.

An example of an abbreviation you don't have to define all of the time is when the writer is discussing a specific organism in a paper, say, Eschscholtzia californica. The accepted usage is to refer to the organism later on in the paper with just the initial of the genus, followed by the specific epithet, E. californica. In this case you do not have to define your abbreviation prior to using it.

There are, however, some abbreviations that one may use in scientific writing that are in accepted use and don't have to be defined when you first use them. For example, the acronym laser may be used in scientific writing without first stating that its initials stand for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

Acronyms are just one type of abbreviation. They are specifically abbreviations such as laser which are in the common usage and have become words in their own right. Not all abbreviations that are made up of the initial letters of their words are properly acronyms.

I thought I had said, 'abbreviations,' in my paper, not, 'initials.' I apologize for misspeaking. Some abbreviations are initialisms. They must always be defined with the first usage in a paper. Some abbreviations are acronyms. If it is acceptable to use it, it may not be required to define it.

Kleo

Last Friday I unplugged webtv and some of the other electronics, put batteries in my radio, left one TV on so I could keep track of what was going on and waited for Frances. Yesterday Frances was far enough north so that the evacuees in Dade county could return home and TV sations went back to their regular schedules. It was still quite rainy and most places were still closed so I left everything unplugged and watched movies. Today I plugged webtv back in. So here I am catching up.

Hi Louise,

I am very happy to see you back here. I was worried about all of our Florida people.

Joan Grimes

KleoP; Before you take umberage to my reference to initials not necessarily being acronyms, I suggest you re-read my post and note that I said "I have to go back a bit", specificly to post #107 ~"Let's walk the plank here and ONLY converse in acronyms for the rest of today?" then read the next few posts. Hopefully you will be able to see that I had no thought of anything you had posted other than to refer to the scientific papers for furthur clarification.

Theron

I am so Very to see your post as I was concerned about you my Friend. Whoopee Louise is OK.

Theron,

I can't actually find anything in my post that suggests I took umbrage in anything you said--which I didn't. Possibly you can clarify for me what it is I said that indicated to you I was angry with your post?

I merely elaborated upon what you said and apologized for misspeaking by using a different word than I had meant. I don't follow what your prior posts have to do with my comments, either, as my post was simply a more detailed comment on abbreviations in scientific writing. Please clarify.

Kleo

I think we answered ourselves by the amount of discussion this little book has generated here. No matter if we like it, love it, hate it or loathe it, it appears we want to talk about all things punctuation.

Kleo

I tried the Moot game. it was a lot of fun. So far, i haven't gotten a single question right. i hesitate to give them my e-mail address, though. Have you done it?

The reason that punctuation is important to me is that if it is done incorrectly, then it takes away the meaning of what was written, and I can only focus on what is grammatically wrong with the piece. As a teacher I have often found myself concentrating on commas and spelling, instead of the content of the piece. As I like to encourage both aspects of writing, I feel I am doing a disservice to my students if I fail to look at what the student has written, and only see the errors.

AlleyKat--Yes, I agree, an excellent point. The reverse is also true for me. If the writing is engaging enough and swift moving, I find that I miss errors, carried along as I am in the current of the writing. It's amazing what I miss if my attention is fully engaged.

KleoP: I could only assume that you were pointing out that my comment on the scientific papers was not "Academicaly Perfect". Note that it was not intended to be. This is not a discussion of Writing Scientific Papers. My comments were not in any way intended to be the final word on any subject. Just my way of expressing what I think.

Theron

I found in reviewing proffessional papers I can either critique at the content or the English, but not both at once. Once I start making English corrections, I lose all wider sense.

Yes, I have given MooT my e-mail address. They send questions about once a week, and I miss most of them.

No, I did not point out anywhere in my post that yours was not 'academically perfect.' I chose to elaborate on a topic I had brought up, and you had commented upon, which seemed to indicate some additional interest. I apologized for misspeaking. These are parts of conversation.

Kleo

First of all, hello to LOUISE. It's good to hear you come through the hurricane disaster unscathed! Now we wonder about our other friends in Florida, notably Andrea.

--x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Re question # 8 : Yes indeed, a misplaced comma CAN alter the meaning of a sentence. What better example IS there than the title of our book, pray tell? Taken out of context it is mystifying and allows for all kinds of speculation. What more pertinent proof do we need??

Re question # 9 : Whether I e-mail, write a formal letter, a personal letter or a post in any forum or folder, it is always the Real Me, nothing more, nothing less.

Back in elementary school, our homework was graded for spelling errors AND for erroneous punctuation marks as well. During the ongoing reorganization of my books I found old notebooks from elementary school (along with other treasures) on the lowest shelves of my bookcases. They prove precisely what I said. Sosmething that is ingrained in you is hard, if not impossible, to forget.

As THERON said, there is a difference between initials and acronyms. He is right in what he said about initials.

To be sure, acronyms are perfectly respectable, and actually designed to quickly define a multi-word organization or term. Take Unicef, or NATO, or the former USSR, or URL, for that matter. Acronyms have been with us for some time, just think of WAC - Women's Army Corps. We can readily think of many more examples. Often we are so familiar with a given acronyms that, if pressed, we may be unable to immediately think of the FULL name of the respective entity.

Welcome, AllyKat, We are very glad to have you here!

Hello, dear Louise, I am so glad you made it through that terrible storm, I hope our Andrea, near Orlando, is also well.

I asked Stigler the question why do you care, and I think we have had some fantastic answers. I asked because I essentially don't care.

We asked the question which medium: email, these boards or real letter writing, comes the closest to the real YOU? I think I was trying to say, just come here, warts and all, and be your charming selves, there's no need to be intimidated? One of the joys of SeniorNet is the ability we all have to be exposed to so MANY different viewpoints, it's exhilarating, but I hope it's not intimidating!! Just say what you feel like saying in the way you feel like saying it, in your own voice, and don't worry what you LOOK like. Looks are often deceiving. Let's all encourage each other, and in that way we'll get the most out of any conversation.

(If I were worried about how I appeared I doubt I'd end every sentence in a question mark, would I?) hahahaha

This morning we move on, to the comma ("That'll do, Comma," ) and my favorites, the semi colon and the colon ("Airs and Graces").

Her tone in these two is a bit lighter, except for one very noticeable slap. I am still not sure (and not willing here in the second week to enter the Land of I Liked it/ I Hated it: how's your dog) what I think of this book. I'll leave THAT to the end, but am simply noting along the way the various bits of her own stylistic expression.

But here she absolutely floors me with her use of the semi colon and the colon, (and why are they named colons?) To me she missed the mark COMPLETELY, is this just British usage? Those of you who know semi colons and colons, now is the time for you to speak.

They are so simple and easy to use (aren't they?) It's so easy?!? Why on earth is she muddling about in this section?

Will somebody who knows Briticisms explain the "that'll do," bit? Remember the movie Babe? "That'll do, Pig, that'll do." Is this some sort of expression we need to understand in relation to the comma and what on earth does she mean by Airs and Graces??

Of all the marks of punctuation, to me, the semi colon and the colon are the easiest to understand and use, I am nonplussed by this section, what are YOUR thoughts?

I am really enjoying all the scholarship and history she brings so casually to this little book, it's astounding all the sources she has consulted, and how she has presented them in this amazingly compact manner.

I do want to take slight issue with her in one thing in this section tho and that's this,

...in a literary culture based entirely on the slavish copying of venerated texts, it would be highly presumptuous of a mere scribe to insert helpful marks where he thought they ought to go." (page 73).

I'm not so sure the scribes were intimidated about inserting anything. Many scribes found time to insert lots of things and marks into the text, including whole blocks of color to stand for well known phrases, and, as Christopher de Hamel points out in his Scribes and Illuminators, , other things as well. It was difficult to copy from the Latin, especially if the scribe were under some pressure: a loaned text, for instance which was needed to be copied quickly so it could be passed on to another monastery, or, maybe, in later years, a client who was in a hurry. De Hamel notes:

But by the 12th century, as manuscript production became a larger enterprise...In any hand-made book, the exact number of words a scribe will have copied over sixteen pages will vary from one transcript to another…In Latin, as it happens many words have the same endings, especially verbs at the finish of sentences, and so [error] is a real risk. In late Gothic manuscripts which the scribe did not expect the client to read very carefully and which were as much for show as use (such as Books of Hours), there was a scribal practice of adding a discreet row of dots under a word or phrase, which ought not to be there. It indicated that the scribe was aware of the mistake but that everyone agreed it would be a shame to spoil the handsome look of the page with an erasure or deletion.

…All scribes make mistakes from time to time in copy in tests. In Bibles in particular any corrections were something proudly enclosed in red frames in the margins in order to proclaim that the transcription had been systematically checked for accuracy.

Here, in a leaf from a Bible from France dated 1300, you can see, especially if you click on the image, very clearly these corrections that either the scribe or person over the scribe, made.

Leaf from a Bible, France, 1300, the beginning of Psalm 39.

The Illuminator has King David pointing to his mouth in reference to the text, "I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue." The size of the text is 1/16th of an INCH here on a 6" by 9 ½" leaf, they must have had VERY good eyes!

The scribes tended to insert a lot of things, and they also occasionally announced that the text was concluding, "very often with the name of the author." Sometimes the scribe even signed the book. De Hamel says "Scribal signatures are not as rare as one might suppose…the Benedictine monks of Le Bouveret in Switzerland have been publishing their vast index of colophons of signed medieval manuscripts and their list, which is far from exhaustive, records just on 19,000 signatures...A gratifyingly large number are women, which one might not have expected."

It's a fascinating study, many times the scribes were not only not monks, but often could not read a word of Latin. At any rate, the scribes did a lot of which we are not aware, including adding the punctuation at the end she speaks of, and other individualized treatments, that's one way they can tell who the scribes were, by the way they altered the texts. I thought you might find that interesting.

But now, what of this new section.

How do you feel about the semi colon? Or the colon? Do you use them yourself?

Is confusion over the semi-colon due to the "telegraphic" modern style of modern journalists, as Truss seems to suggest?

Is, perhaps, the demise of the semi colon and colon more due to our modern "short little attention spans," as Paul Simon sings about, and the demise of the compound, complex sentence structure?

What did you think of her explanation, of "commas in pairs," (page 90), never, except at the very end, mentioning the term apposition. Have nouns in apposition also gone the way of the dodo?

" Don't use commas like a stupid person. I mean it." (page 96). Is this rule helpful? Are there any of her own examples of use of the comma you yourself might find less than intelligent? If so, what are they?

What is a "yob's comma?" (Page 98).

Again, here on tone, Truss in her admittedly shameful treatment of her American pen pal, mentions, "…what earthly use to me was this vapid mousey moron parading a pigmentational handicap?" (page 104)… Cute. Have you ever had a pen pal? Are those types of introductory letters often without substance? What does this latter day characterization of a child's letter show about the author? What does it to do enhance the tone of the book?

"Using the apostrophe correctly is mere negative proof: it tells the world you are not a thicko." (page 105).

Do you agree with this statement? Do you think that the world's opinion of you hinges on whether or not you can use an apostrophe correctly? (And what IS correct, anyway, there seem to be a million iterations and exceptions? Where does that leave the hapless writer anxious not to appear a "thicko?")

Is this enough to start us off on this week's adventure today?

If not, what questions would YOU have to pose for the group?

She does take up, in this chapter, my OWN current pet peeve but I'll wait until the end of the discussion, Week 4, to unleash it.

What do you think about our new section today?

I got the impression that those words mean something along the lines of, good job or job well done. Then of course there is the tone of voice to be considered. I'm sure we've all heard the tone that means you're in trouble - THAT'LL DO. I used to hear THAT WILL DO, said firmly and with no sense of joking.

Ginny--I think you sort of gave it away--what "That'll do" means in the title of this chapter--when you reminded us of BABE and the owner who, when Babe had successfully herded all the sheep where they were to go, said "That'll do, Babe."

It all ties to Truss and her image of the comma as a relentless sheep dog (or pig) who rounds up all the assorted elements of a sentence and groups those together that belong together.

"That'll do" works both as "Good job" and as "Good job--you can STOP now."

I like what GramMuzzy said about "That'll do" as a warning to stop. I can well remember my grandmother telling me, "That'll do, Mary" when in fact I had gone way beyond what would do. Maryal

I would take "That'll do" to mean "That's enough! Whatever you're doing, stop it!"(which is what my parents used to say to me when appropriate). (That sentence undoubtedly is punctuated very poorly - sorry about that.)

Thickos=thick headed=neanderthal type.

Howzat

"I'm not so sure the scribes were intimidated about inserting anything" You've got it! I don't know Latin (yet LOL) but I do know a little about Biblical Hebrew, and in HHebrew, the written vowels were invented and inserted by scribes! Biblical Hebrew was written completely without vowels. This could make it very hard for the scribes (and others) to read, especially as time went on and Hebrew was no longer in everyday use. About 800 AD(if I remember correctly) scribes began experimenting with different systems of inserting vowels into the text they were copying. One family of scribes (I've forgotten their name) came up with the system that is now universally used: small dots and dashes placed under or over the letter before they occur.

Hi! Is it illegal to participate if you haven’t read the book? Unlike Traude, the first review I heard wasn’t very favorable. After listening to a bit of it, I decided it wouldn’t lend much to my knowledge since the experts discussing it seemed to feel Truss made a fair number of errors herself. Just read this New Yorker article and you’ll see what I mean.

Mal: Add 's to make plurals of numbers and letters, including abbreviations. Libby, the daughter of two CPA's, was born in the 1940's.

Mippy: Regarding the left out apostrophes: didn't everyone write 1980's during the 1980s?

Forever I was very persnickety about apostrophes after initials/acronyms (not getting into that!) and dates, but it seems like the “modern” tendency is to omit the apostrophes, and it really makes sense to me since they are not possessives or contractions. Besides, I think ‘80’s looks weird.

Mal: Of necessity, I think, in order to hold a reader's attention when writing something that appears on the web, such as these message boards, one must keep sentences short with paragraphs separated by a double space. This method makes reading from a computer monitor much easier.

That is the newspaper style, as well. I often find myself making many more paragraphs when I am posting, just for ease of reading.

Mal: As far as these posts are concerned, well, when we go to town we usually put our best foot forward; at least make sure our clothes are neat and pressed and our hair is combed, and our face and hands are clean. That makes no difference here where we can't see each other, so we compensate with words and how we write and punctuate them.

What a good analogy. I also edit my posts. I always write in Word first and correct because I am not a natural writer. It is hard to express myself and I don’t want to be misunderstood. Maybe, too, I am putting on clean clothes.

Theron: Take That You Louse

LOL

Pedln: Could it be that such abbreviations like LOL and IMHO come from the days when computer memory/space was very tight and there were no bits to spare? That was also why one used only one space after a period.

Brilliant idea, my dear. I think the single period came about when full justification was computer-generated and letters had different space values. I don’t know the scientific explanation, but I think little teeny bits were taken out to make lines fit. On the typewriter, you had to take out whole space (or add some) to make lines fit. Believe it or not, I actually did that in the ‘70s when doing aerospace proposals.

Mal: I think the worst statement I ever heard from an adult came from one of the office personnel at our board of education office. I was questioning how something should be filled out and was told, "It don't make me no difference."

How illiterate! (exclamation point indicated indignation) That person should have said “Hit don’t make me no nevermind.”

Traude: Furthermore, sloppy writing goes hand in hand with sloppy speech: seemingly articulate people on TV talk shows often blurt out phrases like "I should have WENT (instead of gone) there first"..., or "He could have GAVE (instead of given) it to us."

And I hate “If I would have studied, I would have passed.”

Jane, thanks for the Lands’ End link. In all my years I never noticed that error, but what a cute way of acknowledging it.

Rambler: Kilpatrick is still writing his column--at least it appears every Sunday in my paper.

Ginny: Of the three kinds of letter writing, the formal letter, the email and this type of internet conversation that we're having here, which one, do you think, comes closest to the real YOU?

I tend to write much more informally in letters and posting (lots of ellipses and dashes) because I think of it them as being conversational. When I’m talking, my mind is usually going 90 miles an hour and I do make asides and veer sharply off. Definitely much closer to ME.

CV: Websters says it's an abbreviation for convertible!

convertible bonds, that is. How about cardiovascular? How about five more than a hundred? Curriculum vitae? Well, I actually knew, but I forgot. (My usual response to someone who asks if they have told me something before is “Probably, but I forgot.”)

It’s good to “see” you all again....

MmeW: “Hit don’t make me no nevermind.” But, of course! You must be from my part of the country.

MmeW, Thanks for the link to the New Yorker article. I agree with it ! I used an exclamaion mark because I am expressing strong feeling.

Joan Grimes

MmeW., how great to see you again at long last!

Thank you for your perceptive comments and especially the link to the New Yorker article.

Regarding the addition of a (seemingly unnecessary) apostrophe :

Why, I continue to wonder, do we write DL's for "Discussion Leaders"? What's with t he apostrophe???Wouldn't DLs be more accurate?

I agree with "curmudgeon"; it needed to be said. I've tried to express as much, albeit with adjectives.

The book was enthusiastically received by the AOL Book Discussions and Review group when it was the group's ROM (=READ OF THE MONTH). I was a dissenter, but not totally alone, as I now recall.

The discursive chapters are blurred at the edges : even AFTER Truss moves on to the colon and semicolon, she revisits the comma (and cites erroneous uses thereof) time and time again.

With apologies to the Bard: Truss expounds too much; she goes on and on, too forcefully for me, and ad infinitum . While I applaud her efforts to reform punctuation (futile though they may well be), I recoil from the vehemence and the scornful, even patronizing tone of her message. I much prefer a subtle approach to carrrying a big stick (and never did).

I'm still stunned by the not so much "shameful" as deplorable letter Truss wrote to her American pen pal and shared in her book. It tells a lot about her, I believe, and it may be worthwhile to quote it for the benefit of those in our midst who don't have the bok. Only if our DL agrees, of course.

Right on the heels of the unexpectedly huge success of the book in Britain, the American edition was rushed into print forthwith, unfortunately leaving intact certain Anglicisms unfamiliar to the American reader and, worse yet, without explanation. Ah yes, the gamble worked, the book is a bestseller here too. Success breeds success ...

Thank you so much for the link to The New Yorker article on this book. I subscribe to The New Yorker, but when I get busy I miss much.

I think it would be fun for everyone here, maybe after we finish the discussion, to read this article.

Maryal

I would not use a New Yorker review to decide whether or not to read a book. Don't forget that this is the magazine that went to court to fight the usually accepted idea that what is in quotation marks is what a person said. They spent millions to win the right to use quotation marks however they wanted. So, are we certain that the New Yorker is quoting what is written in the book? What exactly are they criticizing? That others use English in the accepted way without whining for the right to change standard usage courtesy of millions of dollars and a courtroom? I'll pass on the New Yorker. I laugh out loud at the thought of that magazine criticizing someone else's use of language. Truss would need a half a dozen additional best sellers to be rich enough to respond to their article. She can't afford to give us her side of it, against the New Yorker because they don't have to quote her accurately.

I did catch the one glaring McCourt comma slippage when I first read the book. Could this be Irish usage?

Kleo

Oh, but I do hope the book is a hoax. I enjoyed reading it. I'm having some fun discussing the book. However, I love the fact that Truss has so many folks who hate the book or disagree with her absolutely hooked on the little tome.

Certainly Truss is a best selling author. She has readers in here discussing a book they don't like for a second time, selling even more books for her. Will we make her a billionaire?

Kleo

Thinking about the book this morning along with today's posts I have to wonder why this book is such a best seller. I don't think it is a very important book. It's just a little book about punctuation. It's not a guide to usage. It's not a reference work on the English language. Many in here say it is just tongue-in-cheek, not satire. Lightweight humor does not have the power that satire does. If it is only a bit of tongue-in-cheek humor, how can it elicit so many strong words? I think that the unrecognized satire is what folks are reacting to. I think it is what is keeping folks coming back to discussing the book and reading the book over and over. This is also what is keeping this book a best seller. A little light humor does not have the power to do this.

About spaces in cyberspace--> Most bulletin boards on the Web use HTML. I don't think that HTML recognizes more than one space within text. I used a dozen after 'recognizes' to test this board. In general, the second space after a period is wasted in cyberspace. I grew up typing, though, so it is hard not to double space.

Kleo

The extended movie reviews are appealing. I always wait until I have seen the movie before I read them, but I love to see if the reviewer agrees with me.

For years, Pauline Kael was the major movie reviewer. I started reading her reviews when I was in college. (My father subscribed to The New Yorker).

I also enjoy the articles and the profiles. It's amazing how many books have first appeared serialized in this magazine. Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem comes to mind.

Wonderful articles on medicine that I try to read. Sometimes during the school year, I get behind but I try to check back through the issues to see if I've missed anything important.

The recent series of reports from Iraq have been in depth and worth reading.

And the, of course, there are the wonderful cartoons.

Thank you all for the colorful descriptions of the title of the chapter "That'll Do, Comma." So are we saying then that the comma is overused, would you say, or underused? What is your own tendency?

I personally don't know what a full stop is, just run on and on with commas, kind of a breathless way of writing, very annoying to most to read.

Thicko is charming, isn’t it, thank you Howzat, so easy to call others names.

Welcome, Mme! YES it's not only illegal it's immoral, try to get the book, you'd love it, it's you!!

Let's add the reading of that article on to the last week, all we have is Pet Peeves here then anyway, we'll get tired of hearing each other rant (surely) I know you'll get tired of hearing mine! hahaha

Joan K, how fascinating about Hebrew scribes, thank you for mentioning that.

Welll? Is everbody trying to avoid the issue of the semi colon? The colon? Do you use them? Are they hard for you? Do you have anxiety when you encounter them?

Let's talk about number 16 above for a minute, the telegraphic style so prevalent in today's newspapers, and magazines.

I love USA Today, in fact, we subscribe to it, along with the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report, Time and Newsweek, but it's for 4 year olds, it's Sho't Little Attention Spans Personified.

But I love it, where else can you read 5 minutes and know so much?

Have any of you ever taken a Journalism course? Do you know how they teach you to write news articles? Will some of you tell us, if you know?

What HAS the media done to us as a country that we need to turn our own thoughts into sound bytes and make semaphoric communication, (there's those acronyms again), hahahaha Mme, on cardiovascular, you are a HOOT,

So good to see YOU again, don't stay away the next time, I know you are a world traveler, welcome back!

Traude good point on DL's or DLs good point!@!@! Hahahahaa We DO use the apostrophe, prize to Traude!! Bring up anything you like in the discussion!

Interesting point, Kleo, on why the book is such a bestseller, you got me!

Why do the rest of you think it is? That's a good question? WHY is any book a bestseller? I will put it in the heading, the answers might be instructive.

WE are really living in a sound byte world, people long for their 15 seconds of fame, their 16 minutes of culture, their 17 seconds of information, but anything ELSE? Anything that takes thought, or dedication or effort? Please. The "Me" generation has turned into the "Spit it out fast, or my attention span will wander" generation and our literature reflects that, and…would you agree that along with the literature so goes the punctuation, or is this one way in which punctuation leads the way?

IS it in fact, the fault of punctuation or does punctuation merely reflect the changes in the language? The poor French are trying to clean up their language, should we do the same?

Is that what Truss IS intending?

ha'penny for your thoughts?

I love the semicolon; I use it often. Mixed with fragments. Which I also love. Except in formal (and academic) writing, fragments are now everywhere.

I don't much use colons--I prefer the dash. Especially now with word processors that turn two typed hyphens into a dash if you don't use any spaces. It doesn't work here in the message box, however.

The modern trend in punctuation is, and has been for some time, less of it rather than more. Sentences are a good deal shorter now, so the semicolon is not found as frequently. Fewer commas are used now than in days of old. Truss mentions this.

Maryal

Here’s what happens when you type two hyphens with no spaces between the last letter of the word before or the first letter of the word after—MS Word automatically creates a—DASH.

It has occurred to me to wonder how many people saw the title of the book and bought it, thinking they were buying a book about something that certainly wasn't punctuation? Look at the answers here when GINNY asked what we thought when we first saw or heard this title -- a vegetarian cookbook, for example, or in my case, a book of old jokes.

I use the comma before conjunctions that join two independent clauses, or clauses where each one is a complete sentence with a subject, object and verb. I use it before, or before and after, words like "of course", "for example" and "however", depending on where the word is located, in the beginning or the middle of a sentence.

I use the semi-colon in sentences like this where the conjunction is omitted:

It was a beautiful day; the sun was shining, and Alexandra was in the mood to go downtown and shop.

I use the colon in business letters and in the way I used it in the sentence above that ends "is omitted".

Lynne Truss's letter to her American pen-pal tells me something about her. She did everything she could to one-up the American. Tongue in cheek or not, curmudgeon is a very apt name for her.

Mal

I overuse commas. When I use colons and semi-colons they are there just to assuage my guilt at using too many commas. See, if I use a colon, it ain't a comma, so I ain't using too many of them.

Kleo

I have always felt clueless about commas. The chapter reassured me, actually; if my comma use is erratic, so is everyone else's.

GINNY asks why she makes such a muddle of semi-colons and colons. I think it is because she has two separate topics and is muddling them.

Topic one: how to add correct punctuation to this sentance I wrote so people can understand it and won't think I'm stupid.

Topic two: how to take advantages of the beautiful, subtle effects of punctuation to write wonderful sentances.

They are different questions, and by mixing them and shifting from one to the other, she sometimes muddles more than she clarifies. It's nice to see her loving her subject so much: I can ALMOST forgive her for being such a snob. But if she had done some more analysis, and treated the two topics one at a time, it would have been a much better book

I use way too many commas. I have been told by one of my writers' critique group members that I shouldn't use semicolons and that it is better stylistically to use two separate sentences. She hasn't convinced me yet.

I'm wondering if any of you saw Truss on C-Span's weekend book program a couple of months ago and what you thought of her speaking style? I thought she seemed much more comfortable when reading from her book than when answering questions from the floor.

I was surprised she would share the awful letter she wrote to her pen pal. Hopefully, she has matured since then, although I guess some of you would disagree. I still find her book amusing, although the chapter on semicolons and colons was a bit disorganized.

MAL, ah, but the book has a SUBtitle: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. (I think this sentence deserves to be ended with an exclamation mark, but I will refrain- this time. <g>) The subtitle actually reveals the author's combativeness right from the start!

Generally speaking, I believe that a subtitle is an integral part of the title and, as such, should not be ignored.

I like the colon and the semicolon and use both often. The use of the colon is much more frequent in German because IT (NOT the comma) immediately precedes direct speech.

The semicolon has appeared more frequently of late in contributions to WREX; not always correctly, alas.

Why and when does a book with a "dry" subject become a bestseller? Some reasons have already been given during the last few days:

word of mouth; a cleverly designed, constantly churning publicity machine; the follow-the-crowd instinct; the presentation of a book and reader reaction to it. It's really all quite logical.

JoanK: the beautiful, subtle effects of punctuation

Yes, yes, yes! (think Meg Ryan) I find punctuation orgasmic! I love colons and semicolons when used properly. There's just nothing like two independent clauses joined in perfect harmony by a semicolon. And then there's the wonderful elucidation following a colon. In other words, pretty much what Mal said.

Kleo: I had to laugh out loud when you wondered why this book was a best seller...esp. if it is tongue-in-cheek as some of us believe..

Easy for me to answer from my viewpoint.

I find most of what's on the best seller lists to be not to my liking and not worthy of reading. When people mention this or that book is a a best seller, often in tones that imply that's some wonderful/sacred thing, I know it's probably not for me. This has been a delightful exception.

The "best seller" list seems to be based on either books shipped and/or authors who've had big sales before...and so a book is suddenly at the top of the list only because the author's name is Grisham or Ludlum or Steele ( or however Danielle spells her last name).

I think a "tongue-in-cheek" book on the List would be an improvement over most of what's there.

LOL.

jane

my local, library, has yet , to call, me that I can come: get a copy of that book on Punctuation. What does , tongue in cheek mean? losalbern

losalbern:

tongue-in-cheek means with humor, bantering, joking, amusing in tone.

For me, this author explains the main points of punctuation, and she does it with humor and charm.

jane

'Tongue-in-cheek' means 'cleverly amusing in tone,' or 'not to be taken seriously.'

One of my favorite on-line dictionaries is at:

www.onelook.com

Jane--thanks for reading for meaning. It makes it a bit more fun. I'm impressed.

I don't tend to read books because they are on the bestseller list. In fact, that almost guarantees I won't read it. I have tried to lighten up on this a bit. This past year I have attempted two best sellers, Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees and Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. I loathed Bees and could not get beyond the first five chapters no matter how hard I tried. It had all been written before and better by other authors. It seems the soul of Dixie has once more been saved by a troubled white kid. Blech! Sorry to anyone who loved it. I'm sure I read books you would rather die than read, also. I could not stop laughing with the ridiculous opening scene in Brown's book. He wants me to suspend disbelief long enough to think the Catholic code conspiracy is real and he can't even make the first page real?

Best seller means, to me, "the editor is dead, the book is boring, and, don't read on BART or you will wind up sleeping in public." The last being something I abhor.

Kleo

PS -- Sorry, Jane. First time I post without checking the link, and what happens? I fixed it. Thanks for pointing this out to me.

Kleo: the source of my definitons for "tongue-in-cheek" is the Princeton url below.

Definitions

Your url didn't work for me: I got 404 Not Found.

I've worked for professional publications, newspapers and magazines, as a proofreader and as an editor.

Journalism is a consuming occupation and I left after 20 years because I had little energy or desire to write after 8-plus hours a day of editing. Newspapers grind out news articles and it's a constant push to slap a story together.

The media follows a Style Book - there's more than one - and news stories present basic facts (who, what, where, when, why and how) under a headline that hopefully grabs attention. I feel that the sound byte culture has changed print media to its detriment. Newspapers in particular don't have the time to devote to in-depth stories. Sentences have to be short and simple to fit limited space, to be quick to read, and to suit a reader's (assumed) short-attention span.

Marvelle

Marvelle: I think the media has become even more "attention-grabbing" and short, limited articles over the last few years. Has that been your opinion as well? Or, maybe I'm getting old and cranky and it just seems that most journalists just aren't the caliber they used to be? But, I know I've been subjected to a small town, once-a-week newspaper that I used to read with a red pen in hand. With a new editor, it has improved slightly. When they got a new sports editor who may have passed high school English, it got much better. ;0)

Oops...sorry for the negatives.

jane

Jane, there are exemplary publications that most of us can name but the overall standard for the industry has deteriorated in style and substance.

More later on style.

Marvelle

TRAUDE, I have the hard copy version of this book. There is nothing printed on its red-bordered, white cover. On the red spine it has the name of the author and "Eats, Shoots & Leaves". Only today did I see an image of what must be the paperback version, which does, indeed, have the subtitle on it.

I wonder when "media" is going to be declared a singular word instead of the plural one it really is? The popular use of this word today most certainly is singular.

Mal

Hello MAL,

well, mine IS the hard cover. The jacket is white and says

The Runaway # 1 British Bestseller (# 1 is in red and thinly underlined in red) then

in red, Eats (followed by an insert of a panda on a ladder, red paintbrush in hand, presumably ready for that mistaken comma)

new line, also in red, & (same panda still on ladder) Leaves.

Balance of ladder, panda marching off to the right, what looks to be paintbrush in hand.

Then there is (and good Lord, HOW DESPERATELY I wish I had the instant AOL ability to make tabs)

The Zero Tolerance new line Approach to Punctuation (in black letters) At the bottom a red excalamtion mark in the center, followed by Lynne Truss, in red letters, next line, in black, With a Foreword by Frank McCourt, new line, author of Angela's Ashes .

How funny, TRAUDE! I wonder how many versions there are?

Mal

MAL, As I said I bought the book blindly AND IMMEDIATELY because Patricia T. O'Conner had reviewed it so favorably in the NYT. The Review read "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation".

On the strength of that I had no doubt what the book was about.

I think the subtitle should ALWAYS, ALWAYS be mentioned in a nonfiction book from the word GO. The title alone is very often not enough when suggestions are made, and at times impossible to track if the author's name is not there. That has happened to me more than once when trying to follow up suggestions given on the net.

Pray tell, who COULD gauge the following books looking at the titles only without paying attention to the subtitles?

My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past. By Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The Good City: Writers Explore 21st-Century Boston. Edited by Emily Hiestand and Ande Zellman
Valverde's Gold: In Search of the Last Great Inca Treasure. By Mark Honigsbaum.

I rest my case.

Mal, my hardcover copy has a dust jacket with the picture as shown in the heading above (the panda on the ladder). The book that is covered has just the white boards with the red spine and the title written on the spine. Seems to me, we probably all have the same one - your copy just doesn't have the dust jacket on it.

JANE, I am in agreement with you on the current bestseller list offerings. I find it hard to muster enthusiasm on the fiction now offered.

If the term "bestseller" is taken literally, i.e. based on the number of actual sales, how IS one to explain the appearance on a bestseller list of a book by a heretofore unknown author that has been on the market only for a short time, too short to have sold significant copies as yet?

Is it possible that criteria OTHER THAN the actual number of sales come into play? What might they be? Do authors' agents play a role? Are market experts anticipating reader interest - in fiction and nonfiction alike, or possibly CREATING interest beforehand?

I have also wondered just how books are chosen for a literary prize; who is on that jury, how the members of that jury determine who will be on the "short" list and who the eventual winner will be. What criteria do they use?

To my mind, this book is a "tongue-in-cheek" look at a subject which can strike, fear, annoyance, disgust, surprise and other reactions to most people. Judging by the discussions posted here, it has caused us all to think about the subject of grammar, how we feel about it, and what pleases or irritates us the most. Did we learn something? Do we agree to disagree?

As for me, I'm delighted by the whole concept... Colkot P.S. Not keen on the best seller lists..they haven't sold to me so far.

This morning I went to a workshop on grant writing and was busily taking notes as the presenter spoke. I noticed I was carefully including all commas, quotation marks and periods. So Truss has definitely had an effect on my use of punctuation. Lucky I'm a fast note taker.

Off the subject, because this is semantic rather than a punctuation question. This morning there was a column in the Houston Chronicle by long-time, folksy columnist Leon Hale, saying he'd finished reading The Great Fire, the book that won the National Book Award in 2003, (note my double commas) and how many unfamiliar words he'd found in it. One was "paralaliac" in the phrase "He uttered a stream of mad, paralaliac sounds..." I looked it up, couldn't find it anywhere. I think I know what it means but I'd love to hear anyone else's opinion.

I was at a meeting yesterday where our school district superintendent was speaking (5th largest school district in the nation): "... 'If you would have taught them English better, they would have passed." Yikes! my pet peeve!

Cat Woman: I tried Merriam Webster online dictionary and an online medical dictionary and neither could find paralaliac.

It'll be interesting to see where it's finally found.

jane

Mme. Yikes is right. Of course that should be "If you HAD taught... etc." But that too is a common mistake.

JANE, I too am baffled by "paralaliac". Looking at it by syllables, para-la-liac, gives no clue either. "para" and "liac" are word components and could be used as prefix and suffix, respectively, but what about the "la" in the middle ?

CAT WOMAN, could it possibly be a printing error? (The Boston Globe makes them, though rarely. They are all too common, however, in our local bi-weekly, which I no longer read.)

Or is it per chance a sound-alike word the folksy author made up?

Found it! Or at least the noun form—paralalia: n. abnormality of speech sounds

Also: paralalia (para·la·lia) (par ?[schwa]-la ?le-[schwa]) [ para- +lal- +-ia ] any disturbance of speech, especially the utterance of a vocal sound other than the one desired. Called also dyslalia and mogilalia

Mme, what relief!

Thinking it might be an illness of some kind, I had already checked my MERCK MANUAL (1982). No luck.

After seeing your post and definition, I checked again.

There are no entries for paralalia, dyslalia or mogilalia .

click here for link

This is a link to the definition of paralalia in Dorland's Medical Dictionary (the staple reference for medical secretaries). I just type the word into Google and got choices.

url changed to link to stop scrolling...jane

MmeW, Thanks. I had already decided it had to do with speech (I'm a speech pathologist, and dyslalia is an old term used for articulation disorder; echolalia is repetition of speech). I thought it might mean sounds that weren't exactly speech (since paralanguage means vocal behavior)but abnormality of speech makes sense to me. Well, now I have a new word to toss around at professional meetings.

Sorry about having to "slide over" on this page of posts. I think it's my fault, for posting the long web connection to the Dorland's medical dictionary. From what I've been reading elsewhere, this will be a problem until my post #217 moves to another page. Perhaps this post could be deleted by someone with the power to do so, and this problem will go away. You certainly have my permission, as the writer, to do so.

MARY Z - This is not a new phenomenon:

For quite some time, the text in some seniornet folders has been wandering blithely, and seemingly unrestrainable, beyond the right margin, marching to its own drummer. It can be annoying when reading long paragraphs, and the only temporary remedy is the use of the arrows < > in the lower right of the screen to switch back and forth for a full reading.

This phenomenon (for want of a better word) has been reported before but I, decidedly a non-techie, have no idea about its cause of a (hopefully) permanent correction.

The easiest on-line dictionary to check is OneLook because it checks a number of dictionaries all at once for you. 'Paralalia' is in 6 on-line dictionaries.

www.onelook.com looks up 'paralalia' for us

Possible someone inserted a 'prefortmatted text' command in their HTML? This gives the slide over on the screen. Very annoying.

Kleo

MARYZ: you're right. It was the long web address that did it. The solution is to give it a short name as KleoP just did. I don't know how to post the instructions without the computer carrying them out, but if you e-mail me, I'll e-mail them back.

I just discovered something. If it starts "scrolling", and you can tell which post caused the trouble, go to "outline" and then click on the post below the troublesome one. The remaining posts will appear with no scrolling (at least, they did this once).

I've fixed the long url. That is what causes the need for scrolling.

It happens too, if one's own browser, is set to a narrower screen than others may use.

The way to avoid that problem is to use the html coding for a link, but those of us who can will fix those urls when we find them.

That one's now fixed, I hope.

jane

Thanks JoanK and jane. JoanK, I've e-mailed you, and appreciate your help.

Mary

I'm working 7 days a week through mid-December and can only snatch a few minutes here and there to post.

A few people responded to Ginny's question which I'll roughly paraphrase as 'do you care how you appear in posts and why?'

Ginny, I don't care about the surface appearance in my posts or those of others. If someone uses emoticons to express feelings, that's fine. If someone makes a grammatical error, that's fine. These are surface appearances. The longer lasting impression is made by the content (what is said) and that means someone's thoughts and manners.

In formal writing, whether one is a paid author or a business person, there should be both surface appearance and content. That doesn't mean following grammatical rules rigidly which kills the language. It does mean that, on occasion, a writer will bend or break rules intelligently. Writers even have the freedom to pick and choose among conflicting rules of grammar.

SN Books is a place to talk books with other people, swap ideas, learn and to have fun together. Displaying good manners is necessary for this but manners aren't the same as looks. The two cannot be confused.

Appearance without content is silly. Appearance without manners is dull.

Does Truss have content? Yes, but with a few wobbles. Does Truss have manners? I'm not sure. I'll have to think about her satiric stance of 'we're all human and punctuation can be killed by the extremes of the slipshods as well as the grammar purists'.

Marvelle

Do I care how I look on Seniornet? Like Marvelle, I care most about respecting the feelings of other people. I am embarrassed by my bad spelling; I was criticized so much for it as a child, it makes me inhibited in writing. People ho are natural spellers are amazingly intolerant of those of us who aren't. Too bad there is no spell-check in posts. Sometimes, I type the post first in wordperfect and paste it, but that leads to posting problems which I haven't worked out.

But mostly in the year I've been in Seniornet, I've come to feel very comfortable here. I think it's the first time I really felt comfortable writing. People seem to accept me with all my warts and pimples.

But mostly I

JoanK - you were a great help to me. Many thanks. And (with no punctuation involved) check this one out.

Ivan Infrared radar loop

MARY Z: worked great!

JOAN K, thank you for that hint concerning wandering texts.

JANE, thank you for fixing the problem. It's a great relief and saves so much time.

I think punctuation should be invisible. That is to say, its presence shouldn't be noticeable when one reads. If one gets all riled up because of punctuation errors in a book, reading becomes a pain in the neck instead of the pleasure it's supposed to be.

When I played that little punctuation game linked in the heading, I scored only 17% stickler. That really surprised me.

I spent part of Friday and all day yesterday writing a short story of about 3000 words. Only once was I conscious of punctuating it. I said:

"Not that my staff is large. No. There is that pimply young man, Donald Brillig with the horn rimmed glasses, who sniffles more than I like . . ."

I mulled a minute or two over whether I should say, "There is that pimply young man, Donald Brillig, with the horn rimmed glasses, who sniffles . . . .", or whether I wanted the comma after the word, "glasses" I finally decided that, yes, I did. It may not be correct, but it sounds and feels right to me.

No, I don't have a staff. I wish I did sometimes when I'm trying to get one of my ezines ready to go on the web. The piece is fiction and written from a first person point-of-view.

Mal

Joan, I didn't know you found spelling challenging until you told us. Your posts are a pleasure to read.

What is Ginny's pet peeve? Pretentiousness (superior airs) is one of my pet peeves.

Truss earlier joked about herself mercilessly as an over the top purist concerning punctuation. Now she criticizes herself when she was 14 years old and corresponding with an American pen-pal.

Here is an abridged version of Truss' confession in the chapter "Airs and Graces" about the semi-colon and the colon ('punctuation as an art'):

___________________________________________________

"The trouble was, Kerrry-Anne was an everyday teenager with no literary pretensions - and for some reason this made the precocious blue-stocking in me feverishly uncomfortable.... [Her letter] was in huge handwriting, like an infant's. It was on pink paper, with carefree spelling errors - and where the dots over the I's ought to be, there were bubbles. 'I am strawberry blonde,' she wrote, 'with a light dusting of freckles.' In hindsight I see it was unrealistic to expect a pen-pal from the 8th grade in Detroit to write like Samuel Johnson. But on the other hand, what earthly use to me was this vapid mousey moron parading a pigmentational handicap?"

"I replied to her childish letter on grown-up deckled green paper with a fountain pen. Whether I actually donned a velvet smoking jacket for the occasion I can't remember, but I know I deliberately dropped the word 'desultory', and I think I may even have used some French."

"Pretentious? .... [Yes, and] in my mission to blast little Kerry-Anne out the water, I pulled out (literally) all the stops: I used a semicolon.... And it felt so good, you know. It felt fantastic."

End Quote

_______________________________________________________________

Her mission to blast little Kerry-Anne out of the water! Truss cannot forgive her teenage self and she imagines Kerry-Anne getting revenge. Truss in a Kerry-Anne persona: "In later life, Kerry-Anne found there were three qualities she disliked in other people: Britishness; superior airs; and a feigned lack of interest in her dusting of freckles."

There is a pattern to this book. Truss warns about inappropriate behavior by using herself (extreme purist, pretentiousness) as the bad example and then she talks about aspects of punctuation.

This post is wandering as my thoughts wander over this section. Trying to figure out the pattern.

Marvelle

JoanK: If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, there's a little handy-dandy spell checker you can download and use in the posting box before you click the Post My Message button.

It's called IE Speller. It's recommended by the computer ~~studs~~ dudes in our computer discussion here. Let me go get the url and bring it back here.

http://www.iespell.com/

ieSpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell checks text input boxes on a webpage.

If you don't use IE, I don't know of any way except what you've done...to use word or a word processing program that has a spell checker and then copy and paste the corrected form into the posting box. Some people have a spell checker with word with their email and use a blank email form, check the spelling and then copy and paste that in here.

All kinds of "work-arounds" and maybe one will work for you. I've had to learn all kinds of "work-arounds." I was taught to read by the "look/say" method...never had any phonics. Oh, my...some real challenges over the years to learn to spell correctly.

The experience that Marvelle relates above is what I love about Truss. She's honest. I think the vast majority of young teenagers go through a phase of trying to be superior to someone---anyone else--- because of their own turmoils as they mature. I'm reminded, too, of "Margret" in the Dennis the Menace comic strip. Those people will hopefully grow and mature and will end up being perfectly fine adult human beings.

I find Truss tells her tales with glee and honesty; she makes me laugh out loud. I don't think it's that she can't "forgive herself," but that she's telling it like it was.

jane

The wonderful things I learn here! Jane, I'll use the ieSpell often. Thanks.

Also wanted to thank Kleo for the OneLook dictionary site which is now saved in my computer "Folders".

Marvelle

Jane--I downloaded IEspell a while ago and never figured out how to use it on these messages. Once I have typed the post, what do I do then?

Maryal

IE Speller is downloaded and installed on your computer.

Look up under Tools on the Tool Bar of your IE browser...up where you have File...Edit...View...Favorites...Tools...Help. It's Tools you want to click on and look at. ieSpell will be listed there.

Come to the ol' posting box and type your post as you always do.

Then BEFORE you click the Post My Message button, go up to your browser tool bar and click on Tools/ ieSpell

It'll pop with with a spell checker of items it questions in your posting box. Fix/change/ignore as you wish and when it's finished, you can click your Post My Message button.

jane

I've been thinking of the questions at the top, and I do like the semicolon. In fact, it's probably almost "unnatural" how fond I am of that squiggly mark. Now the colon is something else. No warmth or fun to a colon in my thoughts. Ah, but that semicolon-now THAT's a punctuation mark.

If it were necessary, I think I could probably write a compound-complex sentence, and it would be something that might pass muster with Truss.

What fun this is.

I guess I don't care how the rest of the world judges me and my punctuation. It's something inherent/drilled into me from such an early age. I notice it in other's writings. I notice a lot of things about people, and it doesn't form my opinion of them, but I admit it does give me a slant on them. I also notice table manners and what colors people put together and other things.

They're not necessarily earth-shattering in my retired world. They may, however, be very important in the working world.

My husband has fixed the lawn mower so I must away. [Is that British or Australian? I love that expression, too. Not as much as semicolons, though, I think. ;0)]

jane

Well what do you know! Thank you, Jane, for the help. It works. Yahoooooo. Thank you.

M

GREAT!!! and now the dreaded emoticon...

;0)

Shame on jane!

tee hee

I am trying out the spell checker now, making as many errors as I can. It works!!! YEAHHHH!! Now I have to remember to use it.

.

Shame on Jane indeed. You know what our glorious leader thinks of emoticons. Heh.

JoanK--Yup, that's my problem, remembering to use it.

Diagramming sentences revisited:

Early in this discussion, we were talking about diagramming sentences. Some of us loved it and others couldn't see the point. Here is an example. When I was a girl, I diagrammed sentences until they came out of my ears. I don't remember the specifics, but it taught me to analyze and see the relationships of the parts. Now, some of us are studying Latin (with Ginny of course) and some of us have a lot of trouble telling which is the subject, the verb, and the direct object: something that's easy for fanatic sentence diagrammers.

Hear, hear, JoanK.

A fellow diagramming fanatic

The Latin grammar is also easy for Poles or those who have studied Polish. I love cases! I love them! Genetive, accusative, locative, give them to me.

I learned English grammar by studying a foreign language.

Kleo

Me, too, Kleo. I learned English grammar from Latin. I took four years in high school and loved every minute of it. The teacher, Miss Hill, was a slight lady with iron gray hair who lived and breathed Latin. She was quite prim and when we read the Aeneid, she would not let us read the passage about the Minotaur. Of course we all rushed home to translate it. Her greatest dream was to visit Rome. My senior year in high school her students got together, raised the money, and presented her with a ticket to Rome.

We learned the cases of Latin nouns in the following order:

nominative, genetive, dative, accusative, ablative

answering the question who, whose, to whom, whom.

The rules in English are much less rigid, especially when it comes to the use of "who" and "whom" as relative pronomina.

This site was recommended by Earthlink. I think it is terrific! http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/

Gerry: I enjoyed that site. Thanks!! I like what I see as common sense there.

jane

webtv has spell checker available. When we first got it I tested it on words that I mispelled knew how to spell. Sometimes they give you a word that looks nothing like the word you want. I haven't used it for years. If I really need to know how to spell a word I use a dictionary.

Wecome to Senior Net and to our Books and Literature discussion. We will be waiting for your posts.

You will recieve a welcome letter from S/Nets books and literature so please watch for it.

Ginger

Gerry925 Welcome and thank you for that link. It is indeed splendid!

But why is it, I wonder, that people who know proper grammar, and in particular those who teach it, should forever have to be on the defensive?

On the other hand, to vigorously pound home a point is not my style either.

Some of the Anglicisms in the book struck me as UNfunny AND of questionable use to the American reader, e.g. "It's a real fag ..." in lines 5 and 6 from the bottom, page 18. The language is the same, but the Brits' sense of humor is clearly different from ours.

It surprises me that the racial "joke" on pg. 51 escaped the attention of the American editors; I strongly believe this unfortunate "joke" would never have slipped through if the book had been written by an American author.

Just the humble opinion of a proud stickler.

Oh, Traude, you've really piqued my interest (but I'm still not going to buy the book out of stubbornness).

Louise, yes, spellcheck does come up with some interesting alternatives. We had an ass't principal named Barbarini and it kept coming up with Barbarian, which I thought was perfectly appropriate.

I guess I've never thought of being on the defensive as a former English teacher. I always thought the person was aware his own possible difficulties with the English language and was just making conversation. I'd feel that way speaking with a mathematician. My math skills are basically adequate enough to allow me to function in daily life, balance my checkbook, and keep a spreadsheet of family business. You get into all that squared/square root/sines-co-sines (?sp? am I even close???) and whatever, and I'm a blubbering fool.

I guess I've always felt we all have our strengths and weaknesses; some things come easier to me than others. English is far easier for me to understand than mathematics or most sciences.

I guess my quarrel is with people who purport to be "communicators" and who write in unclear, muddled fashion. I think newspaper people would probably be at the top of my list of those types.

Storms are approaching, and so I'm off for a bit.

jane

Well, Jane, I've never casually dropped a 'sine' or 'cosine' into a conversation. However, I have plenty of math teachers and scientists in my family, and sometimes we do converse about math with each other in public. Language is something everyone must use everyday, though. It's very different from mathematics.

Once I was riding a bus in San Diego when a woman was struggling with a very complex calculus problem (not first semester integrals or anything). I casually leaned over and explained that she was approaching the problem wrong and guided her to an easy solution before my stop. She looked simply stunned. Math skills do have their uses.

Kleo

Well, I finally got my book back as I couldn't leave a library book 400 miles away. (If I knew how, I'd diagram that one.) My brother didn't mind; he said his library had the CD of her radio broadcasts that were the forerunner(s) of this book. I didn't know there was such a CD, or that Truss had earlier had a radio show about this subject.

This is a funny book and I'm enjoying it. Marvelle, thanks for your point about the pen-pal letter. Yes, she was a show-off kid when she wrote it, but now she has let us know she's not proud of her actions.

Re: best sellers. Some are good; some are bad. I wouldn't not read a book just because it was on a best seller list.

I've been skipping around in the book, and Traude, I immediately had to see what joke you were talking about on page 51. At first I gulped, but now I think she was reporting what she saw. But you are right. It would never pass an American editor.

Enough said. On my drive home yesterday I stopped at a restaurant called "Four Seasons," which turned out to be a delightful Chinese buffet. I sat in my booth, looking at the windows which all had translucent screens of pandas eating their shoots and leaves.

JANE , when I spoke about defensiveness I had just read the link which GERRY925 graciously provided, and the Q&A (all interesting)put up by Prof. Brians.

How COULD one answer defiant questions like

Aren't some of these points awfully picky?"

What gives you the right to say what an error in English is?"

without being either an enforcer of correct language or feel put (unjustly) on the defensive?

There is no doubt about Truss: she is a vigilante.

Ann, this is a funny book. Truss is reporting an example of graffiti (p51) but there's a lovely twist where the supposed underdog gets humorous revenge by playing on the racist's misuse of the apostrophe. Wonderful.

Each chapter holds examples of how punctuation can assist with social mobility. For instance, there's the graffiti victory (p51), the fairytale of the greengrocer who becomes the Royal Apostropher and the imagined revenge of Kerry-Anne.

I think proper punctuation and grammar are a good starting blocks for social mobility but more, such as the character of the person, is needed.

Marvelle

Correction: the fictional title for the punctuation-perfect greengrocer should be Apostropher Royal.

Check out the following link which has a sublink at the bottom of the page to the Apostrophe Society homepage.

Apostrophe Protection Society

The author has fun in the chapter "Airs and Graces" and her enthusiasm for the colon and semicolon is contagious.

"Expectation is what these stops are about; expectation and elastic energy. Like internal springs, they propel you forward in a sentence towards more information, and the essential difference between them is that while the semicolon lightly propels you in any direction related to the foregoing ..., the colon nudges you along lines already subtly laid down." (Truss p114)

On one of the dangers of the semicolon: "Sometimes - and I've never admitted this to anyone before - I adopt a kind of stream-of-consciousness sentence structure; somewhat like Virginia Woolf; without full sentences; but it feels OK to do this; rather worrying." (Truss p126)

I do love the colon and the semicolon.

Marvelle

This Edu site is about various areas of writing. The clickable index can take you to many grammar areas but this page about punctuation. Click on an image of a punctuation mark and another page comes up about that particular mark.

Grammar

If you click on the semicolon or colon mark, you'll be taken to that information page, click on left for animated sublink on the colon and/or click on right for the semicolon.

Lots of information and a quiz or two. Looks like a resource Truss might have used.

Marvelle

I think I'll pass the semicolon link to my students. Many did wretchedly on a test I gave them on Monday (commas and semicolons only); I will give them another test on Friday. Blaaaah

Hope the Edu site is useful to your students, Maryal. I changed the link so the Punctuation Tree (yes, a green tree) is the starting page.

Marvelle

I'm going to be off tomorrow so I thought I'd get an early start tonight with the last section of our book.

AND then the piece de resistance, the Pet PEEVES week, coming up next week.

Let's have a look at some of the less well known but very interesting punctuation marks in this last section!

(Exclamation mark used deliberately) hahaah

Had you ever heard of "The Exclamation Mark" by Anton Chekhov?

It sounds charming, we are scheduled to read A Christmas Carol this December, let's read some Chekhov in January, and enjoy the comparison, what do you say? WE could do several short stories by Chekhov, along with our diagramming and Woe is I in February?

1. What is your feeling about the use of the exclamation mark? Do you think it has a valid use or do you think it's overused? Is the use of it different on Internet boards like SeniorNet than it is in email or regular correspondence? What might be some legitimate uses of it on the internet which differ from those in books or print?

2. "This chapter is about expressive, attention-seeking punctuation… " (page 135).

What is any more attention seeking about a dash or a hyphen than any other type of punctuation?

3. What is the tone of this last half of the book? Has Truss redeemed herself and her sense of humor?

4. Why does Truss say Gertrude Stein is a strange woman (page 136?) What, other than her reluctance to use question marks, do you know of Gertrude Stein? Do you agree she is "strange."

5. "Increasingly people are (ignorantly ) adding question marks to sentences containing indirect questions, which is a bit depressing. (page 141). Why is the use of a question mark any more depressing than starting an email letter out as Jane!

(And in that sentence, how would you indicate that was a question and still keep the exclamation?)

Jane!?

Jane?!

6. "It's getting quite annoying?" (page 142). What does the use of the question mark at the end of a declarative sentence mean to you?

What force does it have?

7. The quotation mark seems different in America and England. In a question quoted when the sentence is NOT a question, where do you put the question mark?

8. "The ellipsis is the black hole of the punctuation universe…." (page 165). "Whenever I see three dots I feel all funny." (page 167). "Dot dot dot and everyone's doing the same. " (page 179.

The ellipsis seems contagious. Since the ellipsis only has two recorded functions why does it appear more than any other type of punctuation on the internet? It indicates only omitted text and a "trail off in an intriguing manner." Aren't we a little old to try to be intriguing? SeniorNet is chock full of the ellipsis. What does the spreading of this grammatical black hole indicate?

9. What do YOU see as the "future of books?" (page 178). Truss argues the experience of reading a monitor and reading a book are two different things, do you agree? Will there always be a place for a printed page?

10. "The internet is public "space" which you visit and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied. " (page 181).

Do you agree with Truss on this?

How about this one?

"The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value. (page 181).

What is your reaction to this statement?

11. What is the correct way to punctuate a string of the abbreviation, etc.? Etc., etc., etc..?

12. What is dangerous about the philosophy espoused on page 202?

What is your all over rating of this book? What would you tell Ms. Truss if we wrote her a letter telling her about SeniorNet?

Penny for your thoughts?

I believe if I were to write Ms. Truss about this book, I would have to tell her that her shots at my "funny bone" must have hit my neighbor's.

Theron

Glad you piped up, Theron. I've not read the book, but nothing here has convinced me that I would enjoy it. Sounds like humour overkill (how cute I am).

Can someone tell me what a yob's comma is? She mentions one at the end of the book, and I didn't get it. Thanks.

It seems to me that a number of posters at websites seem to adopt a certain punctuation mark that sort of becomes their "trademark." For me, it's been the "black hole ellipsis." Those three dots were part of my sign-in name here from the beginning until I, unhappily, had to go cold turkey and give them up. The software here didn't like them, so out they went.

The ! mark used excessively (to my way of thinking) is comparable to the people who type their posts in capitals. I feel as if I'm being shouted at; I hate being shouted at! There are posts I've seen at websites where every single sentence was followed by a minimum of !!! I'm exhaused by the time I finish reading their message. I would not like to open my email and see Jane!

I hope that the printed book will endure. I can't imagine reading a book online on the monitors that are currently available.

I honestly don't know what Truss means by "The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value. (page 181)."

A lot of website material is certainly mediated and checked every bit as carefully as information in brochures, etc. Yes, there are the goofy "Wacko Freddy Websites" where anything can be put out, but those people have also gotten books published via vanity press and have probably always existed. Yes, children have to learn to evaluate sources on the internet, but that can be done.

...jane

My copy of the book hasn't come in yet but am enjoying the discussion and just wanted to jump in on the subject of exclamation points.

Many years ago someone, I've long forgotten who, said that when he/she saw an exclamation point it reminded him/her (boy, is THAT awkward) of someone announcing a fire - in an appropriately breathless, panting kind of way. Pretty much cured me of overdoing those exclamations although I admit to a certain fondness for them at probably inappropriate times.

Wow - have been away from the computer and can't believe 267 posts.... Started reading them but time for a rest. I'm now doing all the "bad things" punctuation wise, but to me the computer invites a stream-of-consciousness style - and I know I way overdo the dashes etc.- Always feel I'm talking not writing. (You were talking about that way back at the beginning...) I did read the book, given as a gift, and was greatly disappointed. So much hype about it - I kept reading but closed it thinking "Have I just been taken in by a marketeering joke?" Carry on - I'll keep checking in.

Welcome Paulita, I agree with you, it IS like talking, very much so, to me.

I don't think our punctuation on the internet is because of what Ms. Truss says in #13 above:

"The internet is public "space" which you visit and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied. " (page 181).

"The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value. (page 181).

But I do think hers IS the perception of what goes on ON the Internet.

Even today I get incredulous looks from people wondering what on earth we are doing here and how anybody could discuss a book online or, for that matter, do anything else of value.

We have proven them wrong, year after year. We have made a demonstrable diffference in so many lives here that you almost could not count them and we're still reaching.

I guess in a way, the computer IS a "Freedom Machine," no joke, an Equal Opportunity Machine, bringing to every person who can get online the opportunity to exhange ideas with people from all over the country and the world, and learn from experts in various fields who generously donate their time and talents to us, and to learn all sorts of new things, it's a connection you don't often see anywhere.

She's wrong on that one, but she's not on everything, I think.

Imagine writing a book on punctuation, can you imagine?

Jane@!! I had forgotten you are the original Three Dot Jane, but you don't misuse it, you don't over use it, (I didn't even realize you DID use the ellipsis!)

I can't wait to get to week 4 here and uleash my pet peeves about the language and punctuation!

hahaha Diane, we had a wonderful character here as a Discussion Leader years ago who wrote me once, Ginny is it possible for you to write a sentence without an exclamation point? hahahaa So I pretty much stopped, (and substituted the you know what?), hahahaa but ONLINE, it expresses excitement (how else are you going to express excitement?) Wow! Shazaam? hahaaha

or "I am so excited." That does not look excited. It may BE that the internet is forging a language of its own (nearly put it's hahaah I really think using it's incorrectly is a dire warning of something awful, I've just begun and I KNOW it means something terrible).

OK now we've finished the book and we're going to enjoy talking about the dash and the future of the printed page in general (I know I am tomorrow, I look forward to it) but let me ask you THIS one:

IS this just another self help book?

And IF it is, are you going to end up with it just like you do all the others? Are you going to nod and say wow wow and then a week later have forgotten the rules she gave and why she gave them?

Let's answer this one honestly:

Is there anything in this entire book you are likely to remember?

If so what? (Don't look anything up for this answer).

What rule concerning punctuation will you do differently now than you did before you read this book? Why ??

Truss asks what is the value of the Internet, so let's turn the tables and ask what do you see as the value of this book?

Penny for your thoughts?

hahaha Jane, this was funny: The ! mark used excessively (to my way of thinking) is comparable to the people who type their posts in capitals. I feel as if I'm being shouted at; I hate being shouted at! There are posts I've seen at websites where every single sentence was followed by a minimum of !!! I'm exhaused by the time I finish reading their message. I would not like to open my email and see Jane! hahahaa You hate being shouted at?? How about queried?? as in Jane??

It's softer, isn't it? More timid? Almost cautious? Much less dogmatic and flat footed than

It's softer. More timid. Almost cautious.

I like it, and in accordance with page 202, I think I'll keep it up.

I didn't think of the exclamation point as shouting, now CAPS, YES, THIS IS SHOUTING!!!!! oh just wait till next week!

Hmmm...(note the "dot, dot,dot" as they've come to be called on the 'net), I don't look at ES&L as "self-help." She hasn't really helped me with anything. She's just given me an amusing look at a world that I lived in and worked in for many years. I guess I compare it to other "best sellers/wonderful books" that have been hyped over the years and this one, at least, made me smile a lot and laugh out loud a couple of times. A lot of books I've read over the years that were supposed to have humor in them never did that. Therefore, for me, this was an enjoyable read.

Will I remember anything about it next week? No, probably not, but then I rarely remember anything about a book I've read a week or more later. I don't like admitting it, but I suppose that says more about me than about the literature I'm reading. Still, this provided a pleasant 3 weeks or so of reading, and I looked forward to picking it up at night and reading a bit more.

I agree with Ginny that this author's view of the internet is not one I share. I think she's not very familiar with the internet nor all that it can offer. I, too, get a strange look from people when I explain I spend a lot of time on the internet. As a useful thing to do, it seems to rank with people right up there with stripping wax off your kitchen floor.

jane

Jane, I'm straddling the fence about Truss' opinion of the internet, or global self-publishing.

"The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable

value." (181)

Price: a writer is paid by a publisher just as an employee receives a paycheck for services rendered. The paycheck wouldn't be forthcoming if the services were inadequate and don't meet the employer's (publisher's) needs. I disagree with the assumption that $$$ automatically assigns value to a written work.

In the traditional selection/rejection process of professional publishing, a decision to publish is based on a host of publishing house readers, sub-editors, editor-in-chief and, finally, the publisher. If material runs this arduous gamut and is accepted, then there's still the fact-checking and proofreading of the grammar and punctuation; then more and more reviews and editing by the publishing house and the author; and on to the press process.

The internet writer doesn't have the luxury of being reviewed and questioned by a professional publisher which is why readers should question what they find on the internet.

Then again, I believe that all writing, internet or paper, informal or professional, requires examination of content; the art of questioning is part of the thinking and learning process.

Marvelle

Ahhhhh, now Truss addresses one of my problems with the internet. I started using the internet two or three years ago and before then I was, and still am, a person who reads books.

"The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order .... The book remains

static and fixed; the reader journeys through it." (180)

All these years, that's how I've read. Am accustomed to feeling the texture of paper, the sound as I turn a page, the ability to mark a significant passage.

This is how I write. I see my words on paper and feel their connectedness and collective weight. There is comfort in holding a page and revising, deleting, adding, turning a page sideways for more cramped notes, crossing out -- seeing it all by moving my eyes rather than the words moving. I type my fiction and print it for editing from the paper copy. Poetry, on the other hand, requires pencil and paper from first to last.

"Information [on the internet] is presented to us in a non-linear way, through an exponential series of lateral associations .... Scrolling

documents is the opposite of reading: your eyes remain static, while the material flows past." (181)

Writing and reading on the internet? I don't print out my writing before I post because, with limited funds, I must reserve that expense for my fiction. I'm clumsy about scrolling or reading on the internet; much more so with editing my own writing. I'm too used to the physical act of book-reading and writing with pen in hand. If I try to respond to someone else's post, the post has to be directly above the message box I'm typing in or -- you guessed it -- I lose entire words for quoting. Scrolling? Forget it.

I edit my posts in spurts yet haven't mastered that editing challenge. All those special HTML codes, indents, paragraphs, all running together and clashing with each other! Impossible.

I suppose this difficulty I have with the internet will be given the name of some disorder.

Marvelle

Though the words "internet" and "World Wide Web" are used interchangeably, there is a difference between what they are. According to the American Heritage Dictionary in the Microsoft Reference program on my computer, the World Wide Web is "an information server on the Internet composed of interconnected sites and files, accessible with a browser." The Internet is "a matrix of networks that connects computers around the world." That matrix is formed by the means of Internet Service Providers. There are more complicated explanations than this, but it gives a general idea.

What we explore on our computers through an internet service is found on the World Wide Web. SeniorNet, for example, is a website located on the World Wide Web.

I think the World Wide Web is wonderful. It contains the biggest library in the world. There are museums and art galleries that would take years to explore. I know people who are working on college degrees through real life classes on the Web.

I read novels and non-fiction, electronic magazines, both professional ones and non-professional, newspapers and technical papers on the Web without any difficulty. Because this computer in the apartment addition to my daughter's house is connected (networked) to the computers in that house, and I am privileged to use the cable she and her partner buy at no cost to me, I have unlimited time on the Web and do web searches several times a day every day.

I think Lynne Truss is being a snob about the World Wide Web she calls the Internet. It's probably her snobbism that I find the most amusing thing in the book.

I wrote my first novel in long hand over twenty years ago; changed to a typewriter, and now do all of my writing on a word processor. For me it is a distinct improvement.

I'm all in favor of On Demand and other publishers that can be found on the Web. It's always possible to find a critiquer and an editor, if a writer isn't able to do that job for himself or herself, and, for seniors especially, getting a book published electronically on web pages on the Web, or as an ebook, or in hard copy through a hard copy publisher is an accomplishment that should be commended.

Mal

I love the WWW - and use it in many different ways. BUT, when I read for pleasure, I want to sit in a comfortable chair and hold the book in my hands. I like to look back and find things mentioned earlier in the book - not too difficult to do with pages - but harder (in my opinion) to do on my computer screen. When I write, letters or essays or reports, I like to do them on the computer, and can edit them there. John can't do that. If I write something that I want him to read and edit, I have to print it out for him. BUT, I worked for years as a medical transcriber, so sitting at the keyboard and typing at the speed of my thoughts comes very easily to me.

It's just come to me, though, that I may have to be doing my reading on line in not-too-many years. The arthritis in my hands really gets uncomfortable when I hold a book. I've had to prop up medium-to-large-sized hard-backed books on a pillow on my lap for some time, and I'm having to find creative ways of holding paper-backs open. So this may become a real things for me sometime.

Back to Truss - As I've said, I found this book to be a light satire on the subject of punctuation. She got annoyed at many things that annoy me on a daily basis, so it worked for me. I never found her to be taking herself all that seriously, either - just trying to get people to pay some attention to a subject that gets very little attention.

I love the Internet. Where else could I buy a magazine rack, find a discussion of the Iliad, dash off a note to a friend half way across the country, and check the weather report all in one place with just the click of a mouse?

But reading--that's a different matter altogether. I can't imagine reading a book on-line. First of all, my eyes would get too tired; second I wouldn't enjoy sitting straight up and scrolling for a couple of hours. I like to read in bed. Can't take a computer to bed. I read in doctors' waiting rooms, while I'm eating lunch if no one else is around, on an airplane. Can't tuck a computer into my bag and wouldn't want to.

Yes, I think we are more informal when we write on the Internet, just as we are more informal chatting with friends than say, discussing professional matters. But I still try to punctuate properly when I send e-mails or post messages (especially now that we're engrossed in punctuation).

I loved the book. I laughed at her outrageous suggestions and have recommended the book to many friends. I liked her British humor and didn't find it off-putting in the least.

Now I've given my opinion. I'm still waiting for someone to tell me what a yob's comma is.

Re question # 24: Yes, the exclamation point is a valid punctuation mark and any startling statement or sudden surprise merits one. That goes also for the imperative, e.g. "Come here at once"!

Is the exclamation mark overused on the internet? Yes, it is, and that can be annoying if repeated too often. There are other choices when special emphasis is sought: italicizing, underlining, bolding, even the occasional one-word capitalization.

Re question # 28. Truss is correct in that only a sentence that asks a direct question should end with a question mark. She is distressed not by the question mark per se but by the fact that it is incorrectly used in sentences that are not direct but INDIRECT questions, like the examples she gives at the top of pg. 142 in the book:

"Everything ends up being a question" "I'm talking about statements" "It's getting quite annoying" "But at least it keeps the question mark alive so it can't be all bad".

None of these sentences contains a direct question; therefore a question mark is not appropriate; all sample sentences should end with a period (.). However, these rules have been known all along! Frankly, I don't see why Truss is so exercised.

I am fond of and use the ellipsis points often. There is nothing wrong with them as long as they are used properly. Patricia T. O'Conner summarizes the rule simply and succinctly in WOE IS I (and without righteous indignation, I might add).

I see no reason to argue with Ms. Truss about the internet/web or Gertrude Stein, for that matter; she has her opinion and I have mine. The author is committed, well-intentioned, and possibly a linguistic snob (and if she is, I may quite possibly be one too!) but, as I have said from the very beginning, her approach is too forceful for my taste; she is "all over the place" in her musings; the book has no index and is not a self-help book for that reason alone. I haven't learned anything from it that I did not already know and practice every day.

I am glad people have access to the immortal wordsmiths of time by virtue of the net, but for my part I canNOT do without books and without holding them in exactly the way MARY Z has described. And I fervently hope we will always have books.

GINNY, I am not sure about the question concerning the "philosophy" on pg. 202. I've reread pg. 202 and don't know what you mean.

I also hope we will always have books. I am gradually learning to read online, but it's not as friendly as holding a book in my hands. I like the feel of them. I even like their smell!

Having said that, I am delighted to find that there are so many books online. I am just starting to look up sites from Project Gutenberg. i found a book online that I had been looking for for years in used bookstores. Now that I am less mobile, it's great to think I have a library at my fingertips.

Traude, I'm with you on that one -- the index. I would perhaps buy this book if it is ever in paperback, if it had an index. And I guess we're not the only ones who thought such a listing would be useful. Bless the Wide World Web (thanks, Mal). Wherever else would we find what the heart desires so quickly. Please do note the site below.

http://users.tns.net/~pamrider/pand

I'm on a search for for an online version of Chekhov's Exclamation Mark! I haven't found it yet, but did come across a link to a well-known online book discussion group, complete with a "hahaah." Guess whose post that was.

Still no Chekhov story, but Saturday night is not a total loss. I thought some of you might enjoy this review of "our" book, titled Porn for Punctuation Nerds. Almost as much fun as the book itself.

http://www.alibi.com/editorial/section_display.php?di=2004-07-15&scn=art

You'll have to scroll down quite a ways.

I do a tremendous amount of research electronically but the caution is that one can't assume such information is necessarily valid. I recollect, for instance, all the bogus electronic sites that have mushroomed around Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code.

My rule is to always question a site that purports to provide information as there is no monitoring or fact-checking needed to publish. For that same reason, I also do not assume that content and quality will necessarily be acceptable just because it's on the internet. Anything can be published electronically.

Even educational sites must be questioned. Is it an accredited institution? Who maintains the site? What are the qualifications? Does the information check out?

I wouldn't depend on either Woe Is I or Eats, Shoots and Leaves for writing. Woe has an index but isn't a comprehensive grammar book; neither is Eats. I agree with Maryal that these two books aren't substitutes for teaching or learning English grammar.

The Truss book does have a narrative which makes it easy to read and get involved with the comma and its rambunctious cohorts. Truss is funny, makes the language live and gets our blood pumping. Over punctuation of all things!

Truss wants us, I believe, to think about punctuation and to make conscious choices. She admits she isn't an authority but I can see her passion for punctuation. Truss even says that there is no one set of rules and that punctuation is flexible over time, place and/or circumstance.

Mary Z, would a book stand or short lectern help with reading books? I have an inexpensive, wooden one that's sturdy and folds. It holds my dictionary and other heavy books. I also use a tilt top, height adjustable table on wheels that has many uses, including reading in bed as well as breakfast in bed.

Marvelle

Ann, I've accumulated the original thirteen volumes of Constance Garnett's translations of Chekhov's short stories and "The Exclamation Mark" isn't one of the stories. There are used copies available of a paperback called The Comic Stories [of Anton Chekhov] which includes that story. I think you can find a paperback copy for a couple of bucks. In the meantime I'll look for my copy of the book and type the story which is no longer under copyright protection. It's quite short. I'll also post the titles included in that paperback and can type any that aren't available online.

There are a few sites with Chekhov's online texts (he wrote hundreds of short stories). Here's one:

Anton Chekhov on The Literature Network

I remember seeing one site with larger print and I'll look for it again. Chekhov wrote most of his humorous stories anonymously when he first published and he preferred his later stories. I particularly admire The Darling, The Bishop, Misery, Rothschild's Fiddle, and The Lady with the Dog. Of these stories only Darling could be considered as humor, but humor with a bite.

Hmmm, funny stories.... Chekhov's essay "On the Harmfulness of Tobacco"; a Christmas story called "The Shoemaker and the Devil"; "After the Theatre" isn't laugh-out-loud funny but isn't sad; "The Death of a Government Clerk" is a parody of Gogol and one needs to have read Gogol; "Fat and Thin" might qualify.

My interest is piqued and I'll definitely see what titles are included in the edition The Comic Stories.

Marvelle

In case "The Exclamation Mark" cannot be found online, I looked at the B&N site and it offers The Comic Stories, a new paperback, for $14.95 or $13.45 for members. It is 224 pages, ISBN 1566632420, translator Harvey Pitcher. B&N also indicated that used copies are available starting from $4.99 plus shipping.

I also checked abebooks -- http://www.abebooks.com -- and used copies are available starting from $1.00 plus shipping. There are many collections of Chekhov's stories but I know that at least this particular edition has "The Exclamation Mark" and it's inexpensive.

Marvelle

Marvelle, thanks for the idea about the book stand. What bothers me most is holding an inch-thick paperback open. I'll have to see if John is interested in designing and building me something that'll accomplish that. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Marvelle, thanks for all the info on Chekhov, especially the link to the Literature Network. I was not familiar with that. It looks good, although you'd think they could have squeezed the Exclamation Mark in with all those other stories.

Thanks, Pedln, for that link to the review of ES&L. It was indeed fun to read.

Marvelle, I, too, find it necessary to remind myself (and others I talk to about the internet for information gathering, esp. on medical/legal matters) that literally anyone can say anything. The researcher must absolutely be cautious and sceptical of information found until he can ascertain that the site is indeed legitimate and valid. Anybody can say he's a "doctor" or "attorney" and some people will believe the most outrageous things, "because it was in the newspaper" ---and later you learn their newspaper is the Enquirer or Globe (or whatever those tabloids that line the supermarket checkout lanes are called). I've seen people cite the same sort of outrageous things as found on the internet. I'd think they'd become more cautious after getting so much email promising to enlarge body parts they don't have, are a "loyal friend needed to move millions out of Nigeria," have won millions in a lottery they never entered. etc. I think maybe that's the one good thing that comes from all that spam. I hope it's helped to make people realize that lots of information coming in on their computer needs more than a bit of scepticism. One of my first "clues" is noting that words are misspelled and/or the grammar is not standard English.

jane

Jane, anyone can say anything so always question what you find on the web? That's a good motto to keep in mind when searching the web.

I don't believe, however, that following rules of grammar is an indicator that the website owner is concerned about, or capable of, displaying valid information and quality of content.

-- there are dishonest websites by people who enjoy playing games with trusting readers, such as with The Da Vinci Code fad, and which may lead to unwanted spam and fraudulent practices

-- can't-be-wrong websites controlled by people who won't admit to human fallibility

-- passionate websites by people with unique conspiracy theories and other unusual ideas; beware of spam

-- surface websites developed with minimal research

-- abandoned websites not maintained and updated

Someone may choose which grammatical rules to follow, and then follow those rules, but it doesn't mean that the content is accurate or of excellent standards.

Dyslexics might be great thinkers (Albert Einstein), with great content and quality to their thoughts, but their grammar might not pass muster with Truss. Or a brilliant Spaniard maintains a website in English and, even though s/he has difficulty with the language, the contents are solid.

Surface looks aren't the same as quality and dependability of content.

______________________________________________

I research on the internet and appreciate having easy access to a great mass of information.

Being a natural quester stands me in good stead as I search and question what I find. (It can be an annoying trait, all this asking "Why? How? Who says?....")

Once I get results I believe to be accurate, I continue to search in order to confirm or dispute that information through another source or sources.

Marvelle

Ann, it would have been nice to find The Exclamation Mark online so we could all read it together now. Just one more little story online out of the 500+ stories that Chekhov wrote.

About Anton Chekhov

From the above site, Chekhov stated that his writing objectives were:

1) Absence of lengthy verbiage of political-social-economic nature

2) total objectivity

3) truthful descriptions of persons and objects

4) extreme brevity

5) audacity and originality; flee the stereotype

6) compassion

Marvelle

MARVELLE: what a nice resource the literature network is. Everything from Caucer to Agatha Christie online(and that's just in the c's).

Marvelle: I think you and I are saying the same thing. A "doctor" may be dyslexic...but I'm still not going to bother checking further at a website that purports to be medical or legal, and I find medical/legal words misspelled and/or nonstandard English. Reliable/accurate websites would have had lots of staff to check and recheck such offerings...ie: Mayo Clinic site, WebMD, US National Library of Medicine. That was what I was trying, obviously poorly, to say. It's a first indication to just keep on clicking...away from that site! ;0) [YIKES...an ! and an emoticon...and the black hole ellipses and capitals...all in one post]

jane

JANE, I wholeheartedly agree with you that not all the copious 'factual' information available on the net is bona fide or accurate, and I have said so before.

I have recently seen biographical information on the net on historic figures that was anything BUT factual. Some dates were wrong; events distorted; some (true and known) personal "foibles" were lasciviously detailed, and (unnecessarily) repeated (for emphasis, I presume) - by an anonymous writer.

Especially medical and legal advice on the net should be taken with a grain of salt- or two, and due caution. The mere fact that something appears on the net is no guarantee for its accuracy.

There certainly are problems with misinformation. And the problem gets duplicated and duplicated as others take information from one site and put it on their own site.

For example, say that one site, in all other ways looking reputable, has date of birth info that is incorrect. Others who are building a web page copy this information. And it begins to multiply. Because there is so much information of the internet, there is more and more error.

However, I'm willing to put up with the errors.

Trust, but VERIFY.

I once had occasion to look up the origin of our "Groundhog Day" on the net. I found so many articles that directly contradicted each other in what they said, that I ended up completely confused.

Far be it from anyone to say, "Gee, I don't know the origin of Groundhog Day." I found link to Candlemas day and to vegetation rituals and to this one, which I liked best.

http://www.groundhogsday.com/links.php?cat_id=9

I think the problem here is that when one looks into the origins of a tradition, there's sometimes a lot of shadow in the woods.

No pun.

There aren't errors in books?

We don't believe every word in the newspapers we read, do we? Why should we believe all we access on the Web? Yet where else can a pauper like me access newspapers from all over the world at no cost, except on the Web?

I've typed random words into the keyword area of various search engines. Once I typed in "Soup", and a page with nothing except a very good drawing of a bowl of soup came up. I typed in "National Archives building" once, and a porn site came up. Searching the Web can be fun!

Mal

There are errors in books including those books printed by traditional publishing houses that provide a number of mediators and fact-checkers. I've said that earlier. The internet, doesn't have the back-up of checks and counter-balances, and is more prone to errors and even deliberate lies. One needs to be cautious as Jane said.

More later on question 37 or one of the other questions. Right now I'm starving?!! Need to eat? Yes?

Marvelle

Note: Ginny, I think of the question mark without the question as your signature. SN wouldn't be as comfy and familiar without your cliff-hanging, uncertain sentences?

I agree about being discriminating about information offered on the Web, but I have to jump in here and say that lumping everything that appears on the Web together as the Internet and saying it doesn't have checks and balances is too broad and general a statement and should be qualified.

My daughter is Web Content Manager for the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. As such, she is responsible for the content of all the web pages that Fuqua puts on the Web, and there are hundreds. These pages have been checked individually before Dorian ever sees them, and any corrections and/or editorial changes she makes on them are checked by people in the Information Technology Department. If there are errors, the pages are referred back to her, and she corrects them before the pages are opened for public view.

Fuqua and Duke University are not the only ones who do this. I know from my daughter and others in the field that here's a surprising amount of information on the Web that must go through this same stringent kind of editorial procedure before you and I ever see it. I think as one uses the computer for searches, he or she learns which sites are reliable and which are not.

Mal

Mal: I don't think Marvelle and I lumped everything together and said they were all not reliable. I believe we both said there are sites which do check and verify...and there are many which do not. My point was that obvious spelling/grammatical errors were a first "alert" to me that a site I'm viewing is possibly not worth looking at. It's obvious that names like Duke and other universities people know, US National Library of Medicine, WebMD, Mayo Clinic are in a category where the checking and verifying do take place. See my post jane 9/19/04 11:32am where I stated that. I think you're also agreeing with us of the need not to accept everything at face value, but to evaluate the site and who is presenting the information.

jane

BUBBLE: it well may be that Brown's description of the election of the Pope is accurate, and it does bring the information to those of us who don't read scholarly books. The trouble with the Devinci Code is not that the information is wrong, it's that you can't tell what's right and what's wrong. Brown has excused himself from the normal professional standards of citing sources, proving his assertions, avoiding innuendo etc. It's impossible for a non-expert to tell which things that he says have a basis and which don't. I wasn't in the Seniornet discussion, but everyone I've met who knows anything about any of the subjects touched on is seething about the book.

I even caught him in a misstatement. I don't have the exact quote, but he implied that now that the Dead Sea Scrolls have been discovered, things are coming out about the life of Christ. In all my reading on the Dead Sea Scrolls, I have only found ONE SENTANCE that might POSSIBLY refer to Christ, and it only says they killed him. This is the kind of accusation by innuendo that is a hallmark of irresponsible scholarship. Surely,there are plenty of writers of historical fiction who are responsible and serious in their commitment to historical accuracy, yet manage to write entertaining books.

The Da Vinci Code is fiction rather than fact. My issue is with the numerous websites which emerged because of the popularity of the book. They were playing a nasty game by setting up fiction as fact and which obscured the factual websites on that subject.

Question 37 "Is there anything in this entire book you are likely to remember?" (From the question's wording I suspect the anticipated answer is 'no' but I remember lots from the book especially Truss' playing with punctuation and language.)

Answer: I remember Truss' cheerful admission of being a weak-charactered writer who strings together incomplete sentences with semicolons. Her example of that weakness is marvelous and the strung-together sentence parts shows how alive language can be when a writer intelligently plays with punctuation and grammar.

I also remember the snippets of history about the semicolon and those crazy Greek guys and medieval monks' abbreviation mark. This history illuminates the creative, joyful possibilities of the semicolon.

Marvelle

"The Da Vinci Code is fiction rather than fact." Thank you, Marvelle, for restating that. And a mystery, at that. But with all the hullabaloo his book has caused, one wonders if he'll take his place along with Upton Sinclair and Harriet Beecher Stowe on the list of authors who changed the world.

In case you think I'm off the point of reading or punctuation, I look forward to the day when it will be standard practice for works of fiction to be packaged with a CD-ROM of the same title. Not only could one easily recheck specific passages, but editors could link unfamiliar terms to definitions and summaries, and even to links on the Internet. Have none of you never wished, in the many book discussions here on SeniorNet, that you could do keyword searching to easily find excerpts pertinent to another participant's post?

I believe JOAN's post about The Da Vinci Code was a response to a post by BUBBLE in the Story of Civilization discussion, which she mistakenly posted here.

Yes, The Da Vinci Code is fiction, and Mel Gibson's "Passion of Christ" is just a movie. People lose sight of these things once in a while.

I liked the way Truss brought the origin of punctuation into this book. That interested me. I certainly won't foget the title.

I don't believe this book was ever intended to be a resource book about grammar or punctuation. Woe is I is incomplete, but it's a handy little book to have around. My preference is for The Elements of Style, even as old as it is.

Mal

I mentioned Eats, Shoots and Leaves at my bridge club today and one of the women went nuts making all kinds of hand motions accompanied by strange sound effects. It seems she was thinking about Victor Borge and how he designated exclamation marks and periods. Brrrrpt pop! and ..., you know. We can all do it together and have a mighty chorus.

And here I thought all he did was wink from the piano bench.

Ann, Victor Borge!!! Hahahaha! Yes! I'd forgotten his punctuation routine but that would be a perfect companion piece to reading Truss. Ginny would love Borge's question mark ..... brrrr BIP?

Marvelle

I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of humor about punctuation in the discussion. Maybe I can get some started.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves was a joke involving a panda. But there are other punctuation bears. Bear with me. ------------ A polar bear goes into a bar and says, "Can I have a gin and ...................... ............................................ ............................................ ............................................ ............................................ ............................................ ............................................ .............................tonic, please?"

The barman serves him and asks,"Why the big pause?" The polar bear says, "Don't know. I've always had them." --------- Yes, Gertrude Stein had a lot of contempt to punctuation, especially commas. Read her essay on punctuation. akra

"I believe JOAN's post about The Da Vinci Code was a response to a post by BUBBLE in the Story of Civilization discussion, which she mistakenly posted here".

Right. Thanks, Mal. Sorry, folks; maybe I should stop trying to read twenty discussions at once.

Joan, Dan Brown's book had been talked about here too as part of an example so your post was totally appropriate. Apologies aren't necessary.

Marvelle

Funny, akra. A termite went into the same bar and asked, "Is the bartender here?"

Gertrude Stein was not alone by any means in throwing punctuation to the winds, so to speak:

José Saramago, the 1998 Nobel Prize winner from Portugal, uses only the occasional comma and periods and ignores all the rest of the punctuation marks. See Blindness and All the Names , among others.

We had an excellent discussion of BLINDNESS here in 1998, which is in Archives.

I tutored this morning, had a long book group meeting this afternoon and am writing in haste.

P.S. JOAN K.

I very much appreciated your post about the Da Vinci Code. You are absolutely right about misstatements in the book.

JoanK and Traude, I'm not trying to be sarcastic or smart or anything here, but am really curious -- Can a work of fiction have misstatements? Probably a dumb question, but unless the author states that such and such is accurate and true, can't he say anything?

PEDLN, yes, when it is presented as historic truth by the author.

PEDLN: the author states in an introduction or afterword (I forget which) that his historical statements are accurate. When we read the book in my face to face book club, and I made some of these points, several protested "But he said it was true." One said "I believed it was true until I read an article that said it wasn't." Many people do not know how to evaluate historical arguments or have a sense of standards of evidence. One very intelligent friend said it took her a long time to realize that not everything she saw in print was true. When I argue (too long, I admit) against books like Brown's, I'm not fighting him so much as the attitude that accepts him without question.

I didn't get the termite joke for a second. It reminded me of why I'm on SeniorNet: keep those neurons firing!

Are you telling me everything in print should be suspect? You mean I can no longer be sure that Winnie the Pooh is really out there somewhere? Dan Rather should not be unquestionably believed? Whatever next, the inman in my local Iraqi mosque?

Thanks to all of you for your wonderful remarks, and Marvelle, for finding the source for the Chekhov!! We have decided TO do that short story and since it's in a book of short stories, we will do them in January followed by a discussion of Woe is I and the debut of our new Diagramming Discussion in February, we have decided to do a year of reading based on our reader recommendations and the results of our Survey, so stay tuned!

Marvelle, funny, disorder, I sometimes think I have one also as you all are about to discover hahahaha, thank you for the kind remarks.

I agree, Catwoman, I also want to know what a yob's comma is!

Traude, the sentiments on page 202 , particularly this one, "He learns the rules so he can knowledgably and controlledly depart from them as art requires, " to me is inherently flawed. What is the difference in applying the rules as art requires and not knowing them?

hahaah Pedln, we are so famous here, thank you Malryn, I liked that idea of the www as being the biggest library in the world, but like Joan K and Mary, and a lot of you I want to hold a book in my hand and even smell it. ARE we a secret society of book smellers? THE SSBS? Hahahaa

Jane, I totally agree with you on the reputable sources of the internet!! We need a course in THAT here!

Our DEEMS is going to offer one some day once she gets through with groundhogs! Hahaha

Welcome, akra, I think the lack of humor in the discussion is due to Truss's somewhat nasty turn of mind in some of her prose, not our general lack of humor, we're very glad to have you!

Cute story hahahaahah that reminds me of some posts I've seen here.

Carol, great thought on the old neurons, hahaha

Big paws, reminds me of I've always been a "little behind." Hahahaa

I was astounded to find this quote on punctuation from none other than Faulkner to his editor, on the subject of his book The Sound and the Fury and its inexplicable time changes indicated by italicized words:

From a letter to Ben Wasson 1929:

I think italics are necessary to establish for the reader Benjy's confusion...To gain this, by using breaks it will be necessary to write an induction for each transference. I wish publishing was advanced enough to use colored ink for such...Anyway, change all the italics. You overlooked one of them. Also, the parts written in italics will all have to be punctuated again. You'd better see to that, since you're all for coherence. And don't make any more additions to the script, bud. I know you mean well, but do do I. I effaced the 2 or 3 you made……
Another letter from 1929, early summer:
Italics here indicate a speech by one person within a speech by another, so as not to use quotes within quotes, my use of italics has been too without definite plan, I suppose.

So you can see that even literary greats like Fauklner struggled with punctuation in trying to express what they meant. But oh boy look at this one, from the same book on the subject of a watch given him by his father:

June Second, 1910.

Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire; it's rather excruciating-ly apt that you will use it to gain the reducto absurdum of all human experience which can fit your individual needs no better than it fitted his or his fathers. I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever own he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

WOW! He didn't have too much trouble making himself known!

more…

I have a bone to pick with Miss Truss and that bone is on page 181. "…the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price , it has questionable value."

And yet I just read a huge article, I think in Newsweek in which blogging has been credited with no end of things INCLUDING the revelation of Dan Rather's mistake recently, all sorts of things are revealed on the internet and it frees the individual from having to listen to canned propaganda from the news programs, it's amazing when you turn from ABC to CBS to NBC and then to Fox and or CNN the difference in what's said and how it's said, it used to be funny, I'm not sure it is, any more. The internet is here to stay, it's a free press type of thing but that's not what I am irritated with her about.

…and having no price, it has questionable value. Boy this poor woman knows how to push all my buttons. So material with no price has questionable value. What is the price of volunteer work? Or materials produced by volunteers? Does somebody being crazy enough to buy it make it of value then? What is the price of helping your neighbor after a flood? What is the price of what we do here? What is the price of, once you are retired, the materials in time and talent and work you offer back to the community? Priceless and thus valueless?

I absolutely despise people whose viewpoint is only that money is the bottom line and nothing else matters. Yes money matters, we all know that, but should you put your entire life and soul and heart into following it exclusively? Should you route your entire value system ON the monetary value of anything?

WE, the seniors of this century, in 2050 will be the largest population in America. We will not all be drawing paychecks and being PAID for everything we do. Are WE then and the materials we produce worthless because we and they have no price? Is it true that every man has his price? Can everything be reduced to a dollar sign?

I think not. What price was Truss's advice before she wrote this book? Now that she HAS written this book is her advice worthy BECAUSE we paid money for it? I think not? I think nothing on earth makes me more angry than somebody else assigning value to the hard work or efforts of another, and to DO that, while tying worth and value in with dollars is just….ARGGGHHHH!! And we're not even to Pet Peeve week!

And I think I'll stop here before I really go way out on a limb, but suffice it to say I disagree in theory with the idea that if material or anything "has no price, it is of questionable value."

C'mon, Ginny - don't hold back. Tell us how you REALLY feel! 8^)

(And now there are fragments, capital letters, an exclamation point, and a smiley face.)

Ginny; I have gleaned more useful information from casual (free) conversation than Ms. Truss has included in her relatively expensive (price per valuable bit of info) book.

Theron

GINNY: GO, GIRL! (I notice Faulkner agrees with you on the use of color -- you should have written that last message in purple).

hahaha Mary, hold on!hahaha

I agree, Theron, in spades, tho I did learn some things, about when capital letters were first used, for instance, that was useful, and the Oxford comma. Like CW, I am waiting for the "yob's comma" explanation, didn't see that one.

hahaha Joan, well here we are, and ECCE!! It's Week 4 already and we're now entering our Pet Peeves in Grammar Week, so let loose!

Just remember that YOUR pet peeve may be somebody's cherished fave, so tread lightly!

Who is first?

What's YOUR pet peeve in grammar or punctuation or usage or whatnot?

Let's hear from YOU!

Well, here's a shot -- grammar, not punctuation, and I have no doubt that many of you will clear this up for me.

It bugs me a bit to hear that or that's in lieu of who or who's. For example:
"She's the woman that broke her leg." "She's the woman who broke her leg." "Those are the students that'll go." "Those are the students who will go." "He's the man that's going." He's the man who's going.

No doubt the word that is sometimes correct, but when or how? Someone tried to explain it being about animate or inanimate objects.

PEDLN, an excellent question. There is an increaing overuse of "that" jarring to my ears, both in speech and in print.

Here is what Patricia T. O'Conner says in Chapter 1, "Therapy for Pronoun Anxiety" on pg. 6 of WOE IS I:

"WHO'S THAT?

Choose one: The girl that married dear old dad or The girl who married dear old dad.

If both sound right, it's because both are right. A person can be either a that or a who. A thing, on the other hand, is always a that .

But what about Benji and Morris? Dogs and cats aren't people, but they aren't quite things, either. Is an animal a that or a who?

If the animal is anonymous or we don't use its name, it is a that : There's the dog that won the Frisbee competition.

If the animal has a name, he or she is a who : Morris is a cat who knows what he likes."

That brings us also to the question of "that" versus "which" , answered in the same chapter of WOE IS I,, pg. 3.

May I reiterate: WOE IS I is exactly what the subtitle says : The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English ; nothing more, nothing less. To me it is invaluable, just like my Big Random House dictionary.

Truss explains on p. 98 that the "yob's comma" (and I have never heard this terminology myself) is any comma that serves no syntactical purpose.

The definition means to me that any comma that does not have a legitimate reason to be in the sentence is a "yob's comma."

I teach my students that, for example, you never put a SINGLE comma between a subject and a verb:

My mother, saw my father swing. No reason for comma here

My mother, looking out the window, saw my father swing. Here I use commas to set off the participial phrase. But notice there are TWO of them.

You also don't separate the verb from the direct object (or objective complement or adjective) with a SINGLE comma:

Mom saw Dad, swing at the ball.

And so forth and so on. A "yob's comma" is an unneeded--and in Truss's case, a truly abhored--comma.

M

In the chapter "Cutting the Dash", Truss also deals with the quotation mark. She states:

"Until the beginning of he 18th century, quotation marks were used in England only to call attention to sententious remarks. Then in 1714 someone had the idea of using them to denote direct speech, and by the time of the first edition of Henry Fielding's Tom Jones in 1749, inverted commas were used by printers both to contain the speech and to indicate in a general, left-hand marginal way that there was speech going on." (last sentence on pg. 150 through first paragraph on pg. 151) (The bolding in the quoted paragraph is mine.)

Truss does not tell us who the "someone" was in 1714. Moreover she is a few years off because Daniel Defoe used qotation marks very generously in 1706 in his book "Mrs. Veal"; full title "True Relation of thbe Apparation of One Mrs. Veal".

MARYAL, We learned the same grammatical rules, only in different terms:

One cardinal rule was and is that, in a sentence consisting of subject, predicate, object, the subject (noun) must NEVER be separated by a comma from the predicate (verb).

My current pet peeves include "very unique" - obviously if it's unique, it's one-of-a-kind, and can't be qualified.

Another is "where's it at?" What's wrong with "where is it?" I do hate that superfluous "at"!

I used to really hate "free gift" - but I've almost given up on that one.

What happened to from. I hear "I grauated High School" and immediately wonder exactly how it was marked off! M-W Online dictionary shows:
Main Entry: 3grad·u·ate Pronunciation: 'gra-j&-"wAt Function: verb Inflected Form(s): -at·ed; -at·ing Etymology: Medieval Latin graduare, from Latin gradus step, degree transitive senses 1 a : to grant an academic degree or diploma to b : to be graduated from 2 a : to mark with degrees of measurement b : to divide into grades or intervals 3 : to admit to a particular standing or grade
It is used wrong even by those who are making their living talking to the public.

Theron

Thanks, Theron - I'd forgotten about that one.

It's versus its. Somehow they always seem to be wrong.

Other incorrect apostrophe usage. My mother's nursing home sent a form to update insurance coverage and asked for "Other company's names." I was tempted to pencil in a correction but that seemed as testy as Truss.

Run on sentences. I do a lot of critiquing, and I am constantly seeing those.

Misplaced modifiers. Many of them are quite funny, but I wonder why the writer didn't notice the meaning of the sentence.

Misspellings. Why not take the time to check your spelling instead of being sloppy? My grocery is remodeling, and they had a sign out by the frozen food that said "Sorry for your inconvince."

Thanks for the definition of the yob's comma. I wonder what the derivation of the term is. Is it a term used in Britain? Since Truss is so good about letting us know how various punctuation marks got started, I wish she'd have mentioned where "yob" came from.

I agree with the confusion of "that" and "who." I think people should always be referred to as "who."

I may be in the minority but I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I give it ****.

Quiz: Are you a yob?

Ginny, your question mark is used like an emoticon. It expresses feelings such as uncertainty or tongue in cheek. It keeps your statements from closing off the discussion which might otherwise occur if you, as the discussion leader, made an authoritarian statement. (Even if you absolutely know your statement is true, you can keep things light and open-ended with the question mark.)

Woe Is I is not a comprehensive grammar book. It doesn't read like a narrative, unlike Truss' book, and doesn't create such a stir in readers. Woe is a good book but isn't the ultimate grammar resource. I prefer Rules of Thumb, also not comprehensive, but organized for ease of use.

If I have a choice, however, between Woe, Rules and a dictionary, it is the dictionary that fascinates. Now there's a book!. I open a dictionary with the naive intention of looking up one word but soon am caught up in its etymology, in the synonyms, in the nuances of definitions. Then another column of words catches my attention and I'm off and away.

Marvelle

Well, I took the quiz, and the result said, "You work hard and play hard," but it didn't tell me if that meant I was a yob. I suspect I am not yobbish enough to qualify. On the other hand, if a yob's comma is one that doesn't belong, maybe...

I must not belong either, Cat Woman, because I didn't understand some of the questions in the quiz. Oh well.

Marvelle

I'm like Marvelle - I didn't understand some of the references in the quiz. And I still don't know what a "yob" is.

Youth of Britain (yob) Yob culture

I answered all the questions as I expect an anit-social teenager would, and guess what, I scored a 24!! After having been 29 for 40 years, I qualify as a YOB!

Theron

Yob's comma, quote from New Statesman magazine, "The yob's comma, of course, has no syntactical value...." (Truss 98-9)

Truss writes of the sentence example of a yob's comma given by the magazine: the comma "is not only ungrammatical and intrusive, but throws the end of the sentence ... into complete semantic chaos." (Truss 99)

Syntactical, also syntactic: adj. of or pertaining to syntax; ordered, arranged together

Syntax: n. the pattern or structure of the word order in a sentence or phrase

__________________________________________

Yob is not used by Truss who quoted the magazine on the yob's comma only.

Yob, back slang for boy, 19th century origin, possibly Cockney

From Compact Oxford English Dictionary: yob - n. Brit informal; a rude and loutish young man

From Cambridge International Dictionary of English: yob - n. a young man who behaves in a very rude, offensive and sometimes violent way

From www.allwords.com: a bad-mannered, aggressive young person (usually male); a lout or hooligan

From nottinghillwalk.tripod.com, a website of British slang: yob - uncultured person

Lout, hooligan, aggressive and brutish are words found in many of the definitions for yob.

_________________________________________________

Lout, from Random House Dictionary: n. an awkward, stupid person; clumsy, ill-mannered boar; oaf

Loutish, adj. like or characteristic of a lout: awkward; clumsy; boorish; synonyms: churlish, uncouth, vulgar, coarse.

Marvelle

Here's the definition I found for yob--

The noun "yob" has 1 sense in WordNet.

1. bully, tough, hooligan, ruffian, roughneck, rowdy, yob, yobo, yobbo -- (a cruel and brutal fellow)

I'll check the OED to see if we can find out how far back it goes. Clearly it is a British expression.

YOB

slang

Orig. simply, a boy, a youth; in mod. use, a lout, a hooligan; (see also quot. 1918).

1859 HOTTEN Dict. Slang 131 Yob, a boy. 1886-96 in Farmer & Henley Slang (1903) VII. 375/1 And you bet that each gal, not to mention each yob, Didn't care how much ooftish it cost 'em per nob. 1908 A. M. N. LYONS Arthur's II. i. 108 It'd take more'n a yob in a squash 'at to call me a blighted sooper. 1918 FARROW Dict. Milit. Terms 673 Yob, a slang term used by soldiers meaning an officer or one who is easily fooled. 1927 J. C. GOODWIN Crook Pie iii. 71 A yob shouted: ‘Now for yer belts, boys!’ and my friend was thrashed. 1930 P. MACDONALD Link 130 Well, sir, I sez to meself, what does A do? Then I thinks, keep the mob off. So I jest backs into the door of the public, and doesn't let any of the yobs get out. 1957 J. OSBORNE Look Back in Anger I. 15 ‘Let's go to the pictures.’.. ‘And have my enjoyment ruined by the Sunday night yobs in the front row?’ 1962 J. WAIN Strike Father Dead VII. 303 If you're expecting a description of what those yobs did to us, please forget it. 1977 Western Morning News 30 Aug. 1/3 One police officer sheltering from a bombardment of missiles behind a plastic shield said: ‘It's just a bunch of yobs.’ 1984 Times 16 Feb. 3/1, I would not want anybody looking at me to think this man is a thick, stupid, illiterate yob.

Hence yobbery, hooliganism; yobbish a. characteristic of a yob; yobby a., loutish.

Interesting that it goes back until at least 1859. Not a word of modern origin at all.

MARVELLE, I have never extolled the virtues of WOE IS I to the exclusion of any other book on English grammar. It's not my style to make ponderous universal pronouncements and exhortative recommendations. To each his own, I say, suum cuique, as the Romans said.

WOE IS I is funny and very much up to date, short and wonderful for checking in the index something one might have temporarily forgotten in a "senior moment". Chapter 9 of WOE IS I, "The Living Dead, Let Bygone Rules Be Gone", is a howl. Summa summarum, the facts laid out in this book confirm what I have long known and learned in Europe from the age of 16, and I really feel no need to consult any other English grammar, no matter how authoritative it is.

Mercifully, O'Conner is neither argumentative nor exhortative, and Truss to me is what the French call "de trop".

P.S. Dictionaries are wonderful and indispensable in providing definitions, for help with grammar one needs to turn elsewhere.

In answer to the last question -- I'll rate this book a 4 star. It was funny, enjoyable, I learned some things I didn't know about punctuation, and whenever I brought it up in public it always prompted interesting discourse.

Now for the yobs. Hooligan sounds like a good definition to me. Like Cat Woman, I was one who worked hard, played hard, but kept my wilder tendencies in check. I wondered what would happen if I went wild, but unfortunately, before I could get an answer, the heavens of cyberspace opened up and I was saturated with spyware, adware, unwanted downloads, at least a dozen new icons on my desktop, and a rather ornery computer. Not blaming the Guardian. There were warning signs before I even started. But, what an ending for such a delightful book. I'm now in the land of backup laptop without notes, links, addresses, etc., grateful of course, but wanting to lay/lie (?) low and lick my wounds and say "yobs be gone."

I think Truss is funny too. She has the underdog's sense of humor though and that type of humor isn't understood by everyone.

Truss is also a novelist which is one reason why her book on punctuation has a narrative thread. There may be dots to connect for meaning(s) within this book by a novelist.

Marvelle

George Bernard Shaw (GBS) was a socialist

GBS co-founder in 1884 of the Fabian Society, a socialist political organization

Labour Party established in 1900, co-founder was the Fabian Society

New Statesman magazine founded in 1913 by the Fabian Society

London School of Economics founded by Fabian Society and one of the alumni is the lawyer Cheri Booth, wife of Tony Blair

Tony Blair, P.M. and Labour Party, is a member of the Fabian Society

Odd to think that the New Statesman would have become conservative enough by the 1970's to write about a yob's comma. Perhaps Maryal or Ginny have personal experience with this publication. Then again, GBS, one the founders of the magazine, did have unique views on language and punctuation. GBS believed in upward mobility through education, as we see in his 1913 play Pygmalion, a satire on class and on the education and upward mobility of a cockney girl.

From the below link on GBS: "With Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Shaw founded the Fabian Society, a socialist political organization dedicated to transforming Britain into a socialist state, not by revolution but by systematic progressive legislation, bolstered by persuasion and mass education.... Shaw lectured for the Fabian Society, and wrote pamphlets on the progressive arts ...." End Quote

George Bernard Shaw

One of the first publications of the Fabians was "Why are the many poor?" which was part of their campaign against the Poor Law. If you want more background on the Fabians and the Poor Law (more information on related subjects with too many sublinks) see:

GBS, Fabian Society, and Poor Law

A link that's easy to read (no sublinks) but with a rosy viewpoint since written by the Fabian Society:

A Short History of the Fabian Society

Tony Blair has retitled his political party the "New Labour" to indicate changes. The Fabian Society has changed also and seems more moderate but still interested in education and is currently compaigning for government regulation of the internet.

____________________________________________

I'm not familiar with English magazines, organizations, or politics and it's impossible for me to know absolutely what Truss was indicating, if anything, with the quotation about the yob's comma and, in the last chapter, her allusion to the well-known George Bernard Shaw. I think there is a connection between the passion for language, with the warning for moderation, and the idea that education is a tool of the underdogs to use for social mobility.

We see that linkage with the underdog triumphing over the racist, the fairytale-hero-greengrocer who becomes the Apostropher Royal, the revenge of the Kerry-Anne persona against the pretentious, teenager Lynne.

Will look up another idea I've just had and return.

Marvelle

I completely irrelevant comment about "The New Statesman", with no political overtones intended.

When we moved to Israel in the 60s, my husband subscribed to The New Statesman to have an English magazine to read. It came on special thin paper, so it could be air-mailed more cheaply.

Well, we loved Israel, but we had one problem, typical of US tourists: the toilet paper!! It was like sandpaper. After using it for awhile, we were suffering greatly. I was even drawn into my one and only foray into crime: shoplifting American toilet paper from the bathrooms of a nearbye fancy hotel that had it.

My husband saved us. He discovered that the thin New Statesman paper was much better toilet paper than the stuff we had been using. We survived on the New Statesman for three years.

Ever since, I have had a fondness for the New Statesman, but a rather different take on it than most people.

haha ahahaahHAHAHAHAH only on SeniorNet! hahahaha Priceless and priceless, Joan K, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person whose...those who know me laugh at my....unseemly obsssion with "paper products," boy howdy ahahahah that is so funny. The stories I could tell you about my forays into Europe and the attendant "paper products!~" Well! hahhahaah YOu really don't want to know. ahahahaa Just this last spring...... hahaahahah I've often thought one should write a book on the dark side of traveling. hahahaaa

Priceless!

JoanK, that's absolutely hysterical! I hope you have shared this story with The New Statesman.

Loved it, Joan. It just goes to show that printed materials will never go out of fashion!

Marvelle

I did find earlier references to George Bernard Shaw (GBS) in this book. He was basically self-taught and is another example of someone using education for social mobility. Truss mentions GBS but never Pygmalion, one of his most famous works. The play was transformed into a musical and re-named My Fair Lady.

My thought on this as I was connecting dots about Fabians, Labour, education, GBS ... hmmm, a working class girl who uses education for social mobility.

I noted how this idea is embedded in Truss' book and might be Truss' story. Certainly the book is filled with personal feelings but not her personal feelings.

From online interviews with Lynne Truss:

1 - She is a working class girl

2 - The Truss family home was part of a council (housing) estate

3 - Both parents left school at age 14 and her father was a self-taught accountant; both parents were readers and took daughter Lynne on their weekly library trips

4 - Lynne Truss says she'd felt that 'the likes of her were not entitled to write novels ...' Said Truss: "It was to do with self-esteem and class...." and it was years before she felt she was entitled.

5 - It took her a year to approach a business about the punctuation error in their sign; she doesn't approach individuals who make errors.

Marvelle

Interesting about Truss' background, Marvelle. It says a lot about the power of place and expectations.

I've no doubt come across this in other British novels and glossed over it, but since reading E,S & L, I'noticed it twice in a mystery by Elizabeth George (yes, I know she's American, but her characters and setting are British) -- "That's the way it is. Full stop." and "Everyone was here, all night long. Full stop."

Interview 08/11/04 by The Age, How Lynne Made Her Marks - Truss talks about her background, her writing, and looking at punctuation with humor rather than nastiness.

Interview 06/20/04 by the Sunday Herald, Truss Laws - Truss discusses, in part, being an outsider in sports journalism, her sense of dread that her punctuation book could be public suicide.

Interview 01/15/04 Holdthefrontpage, It's "nothing compares WITH you"! - Truss reveals that the book was her publisher's idea and she doesn't take direct action with commercial punctuation errors.

_____________________________________________

Article by Lynne Truss in the 08/07/04 Daily Telegraph, Your pour thing.... , about education for social mobility and Bill Cosby's similar message.

Marvelle

Ann, so Elizabeth George is American? I wouldn't have guessed that from her mystery books and I do like her writing. Now I have to dig out her books from my packed boxes! Must read some of those mysteries and look at the punctuation.

In my post 349 I dropped the last part of a sentence which then doesn't make much sense.

The sentence is "Certainly the book is filled with personal feelings but not her personal feelings."

The way it should read with the chopped out part added in:
"Certainly the book is filled with personal feelings but not her personal feelings about being an outsider."

It seems like Truss didn't want to trade on her personal background and even her schooling, what in the U.S. is called public school, is glossed over and almost impersonal. Yet it is her personal background, which couldn't be kept private once the book was published, that helped create the passionate belief in education as a vehicle for social mobility.

________________________________________

I had easy access to the first linked interview from www.theage.com/au, "How Lynne Made Her Marks" but now I've had to register to get the article. I can add a few quotes from the quite lengthy interview if people prefer but the complete interview is excellent and most revealing of Truss' personality and her background.

Near the end of that interview: "She [Truss] makes no claims to being a grammarian, but it is still agonising to be told she has made errors ...Of course people want to score points against her, but she doesn't have to play their game."

Continued from interview is a quote from Truss: "What is so funny is that the subject has been associated with mean-minded, petty and ghastly people for a very long time," she says. "But it doesn't have to be. You can look at it with humour. You can look at the history. It's not just about getting things right and wrong and being nasty to people who get things wrong. I am never nasty to people who get things wrong. And then people come along and say, 'No, this is my subject and I'm going to tell you where you went wrong'. And it seems such a tragedy they can't get the point enough not to do that." End quote

Marvelle

Yesterday I was at at a High School re-union in London England. I wrote a short piece about being a student there during WW2 and was interviewed for the 100th Anniversary which will take place in May 2005. I had not reviewed Ms Truss's background but had surmised that it was similar to mine. I was a Scholarship student, as were many of my friends, to this prestigious school so I can identify with her. If it meant upward mobility through education.. then more power to us. It takes a long time to overcome those feelings of inferiority..Thanks SeniorNet for validating my writing skills and intelligence. Colkot

Colkot, you have to be smart and talented to be a scholarship student and to write so beautifully as an adult. Good for you.

We have similar backgrounds. Even through education - first self-taught with reading and then formal when I convinced my adult self I was allowed to go to college - it was a long time before I overcame my timidity.

The positive side, as we know, is that we're all the stronger because of our backgrounds.

I hope you'll - Colkot and everyone - tell us your pet peeve(s) and rate Truss' book.

I'll try to respond to those questions later today when I'm off work. (I'm writing this post during my coffee break.)

Marvelle

Thanks for the compliments..I had just prepared a brief reminiscence for my school in preparation for the 2005 celebrations and was also interviewed by video. The school will be 100 years old in May 2005 Right now I'm in Windsor, where they are having a festival. This means that we have a chance to go to a couple of lunchtime concerts as we have done previously. Later on in the week we are going to London and then to Lille by Eurostar..When I come up for air I'll be in touch.(this is my friend's computer) Expect to be back in USA by 6th October Colkot

I enjoyed the hyperbole, the humor/silliness of this little book. I'd give it 3.5 stars.

My pet peeves center around oral English. At the moment, I cringe with every "you know" sprinkled 8-10 times in response to a question in an interview -- or the teen fad of using "like" as in...

I was, like, you know, totally [whatever the current term is] when he, like, did that, you know?

I have no clue how to punctuate all those "likes," but I'll assume it is done as one would any useless parenthetical . I want to grab them and shake all the "likes" and the "you knows" from their heads! I hope they don't write as they speak, you know? ;0)

jane

I, too, enjoyed the articles, thank you, Marvelle, I read the middle one, she seems quite mild, even shy or timid, and it's somewhat interesting about her background, She gets it out, I believe, in her prose which I find the opposite of timid, the very "yob's comma," thank you Yob Theron haahahah shows her for what she is, and that makes me have a question for ALL of us, coming up.

Colkot, you are fabulous, we're so glad you're with us!

I'm so enjoying all of the Pet Peeves, and I've been idly wondering what our own pet peeves say about each of us. Have you ever looked at your OWN Pet Peeves, and asked yourself honestly WHY you have that particular one bothers you, and what that ONE seems to address and why it irritates YOU? What it says about YOU?? Not the peeve itself??

Some of my own peeves are emoticons, "smileys, " HATE the #$##& things, and url's to fake sites full of bogus information, the best example of which in the last 8 years was one in the Julius Caesar discussion, outwardly very impressive looking site. When you took the careful time to get down to the author himself and his credentials, he actually believed he spoke to aliens (who must have supplied the historical facts he spouted, they were pretty bad).

Ohter pet peeves are: the over use of the word OOOHhhh, as in ohhhh, Mary, I'm so sorry, ohhhh please please spare us, acronyms such as SDMCSIWDYCT, which to me are stupid, the use of abbreviated abominations such as 'puter.

I can't understand the cutesy 'puter. How many letters do you save writing 'puter? Two? Cutesy cutesy, turns my stomach every time I see it.

I know some of you use it and I mean no disrespect or anything else but sometimes you read somebody's post and it's so full of email addys and 'puters it's almost incomprehensible, and it's so cutesy and cloying it makes me want to barf. Example: "Sam, send me your email addy to my snail mail addy, my 'puter is down,"

The acronyms, some posts are almost all :-0 and CUL8Rs, again is this some secret club? Are we so proud of being able to use the computer we need to make a secret club of language about it? Aren't we a little old for secret clubs with secret handshakes and languages?

Then there's the horrendous

Winky Dink, actually makes my stomach turn over, Winky Dink and You, I can still sing that song, do any of you remember that program? Almost never do you see the Winky Dink online that somebody has not said some snotty nasty thing they want to excuse away and make right by using that combination of symbols: the Winky Dink.:

I'm a little old for Winky Dink and You, that was a children's program in the '50's. Remember it? You wrote ON the television screen? We are probably all irradiated for life.

Er…..so does this mean I hate informality or cutesyisms? Does this mean that I think of the internet as a place where you can actually accomplish something serious or of value and worth, and that's why that type of thing is such a turn off? Maybe. If we look hard at what bothers us, what does it say about US??

Let's examine honestly our own pet peeves and ask ourselves what horse Truss is riding in on, as well?

For the interesting historical background I will give this little hour read *** ½ stars. For her underlying nasty attitude or defensive attitude or whatever you call it seeping through I will give it * So for my total recommendation I'll go with ** because a reading experience is the sum total of its hahaha In Edit: I, in my IA, actually wrote it's here!!! Take THAT Lynne Truss! hahaha parts. Reading Truss is like petting a porcupine, once in a while you get stuck.

What are YOUR thoughts on any of the above. THANK you for helping, all of you, with this discussion, you've done an admirable job with this little book, I think.

Ginny, m'dear, would you like poor Winky better if he were straight up instead of sideways?

Poor

I like him better than *-*, or something to that effect, which is rightside up but doesn't really resemble anything.

I blame the smiley, little yellow circle with eyes and a smile; they were ubiquitous for a long time and the gloomiest people liked them best I think. Smileys (smilies?) ruled long before the internet took off.

Personal pet peeve = <g>.

Took me a long time to figure out what it meant.

I'm OK with it now that I know.

I don't much like ROFLMAO and all the rest of them.

I laughed at your post, GINNY, and agreed with most of it. I don't like "'puter", either. And I don't like "clickable" when referring to a link. Or (and I might already have said this here) "eh eh eh eh", which reminds me of some Simon Legree type while he twirls his handlebar moustache and stands over a poor, victimized women.

Hard as I tried, I couldn't find an mp3 of either of the "more than metal" groups which call themselves yob or "Youth of Britain". One is in Oregon, and the other is in Vancouver. I know that if I had found an example of their music, all of you would have been thrilled through and through.

I give this book an over-generous ***. I didn't like it and wish I hadn't wasted the money I spent to buy it -- used. There are plenty of used copies on the internet market if you're interested in giving them as holiday gifts, by the way.

I still can't figure out why people flock to buy this book, and don't like the idea that Truss is raking in money when some of us are having trouble finding buyers for much better stuff, like SCRAWLER's collection of short stories, essays and poetry, A Century to Remember, and A.D.62, Pompeii by Rebecca East, a fine, well-researched, well-written book I hope we'll discuss sometime.

Mal

Oh yes, Deems, <G> <VBG> <RGN> <RGLAFN> Yes indeedy.

Now Malryn does that hee hee hee also extend to the hahaha? I hate the HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, that's another one I've seen used poorly.

I forgot about Rebecca East's book , yes we need to read it also, we said we would, in the spring, we're getting up a log, where can we keep all these suggestions, maybe in the Books First Page Cafe thing, a box in the heading I will request one!

Jane, your punctuation of all those likes is like awesome, you know.
I was actually impressed the first time I heard a teenager use that word, on TV, until I started hearing every teenager in town using it 16 times a day.

Ginny, what's an "addy?" What is IA?

The one question Truss has not answered is, "What are opal fruits?" They're apparently a big deal because I've come across them in other publications where the characters eat as many as those referred to by Truss.

GINNY, it's eh eh eh, not hee hee hee, which I don't like, either. I'd rather see ha ha than LOL. Maybe people should attach a WAV file of laughter to posts. Maybe we all should just get together and have a happy time talking and laughing with each other face to face. Wish I could go to Books at the Beach.

Mal

Opal Fruits are candy. The name has been changed to "Starburst". See what the BBC says about this by clicking the link below.

Opal Fruits

Malryn, thanks. I wasn't too far off -- picturing them as lifesavers. Interesting article -- how dare MARS change an institution like Snickers? And somehow, I just can't picture Winston Nkata eating Starbursts.

I was in one of my two favorite bookstores in Windsor browsing in the children's section for books for my younger grandchildren. This time of year it is possible to purchase 3 for the price of 2(how I bought my OUD) Apparantly Ms Truss had been in the store, I presume signing books,the upshot of all this is EXACTLY what I said previously..it was tongue-in cheek.. a hoot.. she was very funny(they said) and never expected the book to take off as it did. Anyway,you know, you know..my pet hate..!

Take care all Colkot

On pet peeves: To tell the truth, I no longer get exercised over people's foibles or their uncertainties about punctuation, grammar, or proper speech. Life is short and, though I may once have had a crusading vein, I now aim for harmony and tolerance.

However, I admit to getting annoyed by malapropisms and also especially inaccurate Latin phrases, such as ad nauseUm instead of the correct ad nauseAm , seen on the net quite often. But when I saw "in memoriUm" instead of in memoriAm , I almost became apoplectic.

Yet how DOES one correct that error, or ANY error for that matter, found on the net? Or anywhere ? The "with due respect" introduction may not be enough. I think that GINNY's Latin I class will go a long way toward opening people's minds to Latin nouns, cases, genders, respective agreements, and all the rest. The old saw has it right: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

As for the innovative phrases that came with computer use, I have never used hahaha, hehehe; have never seen eh eh eh, MAL; I avoid the word "lurk" and find a substitute. Somewhere I have a list of emoticons and what they mean, but I type on impulse and could not possibly look up what they mean at each turn. In time I learned the meaning of manufactured acronyms like LOL and its variations, but I don't use them. I admit to the occasional use of <g> for "grin", because it is harmless and conveys the meaning.

As I have said before, some of the Anglicisms and terms in Truss's book, with which American readers are not familiar, should have been either edited out or explained/defined in a glossary. But how could there be a glossary if there isn't also an index? Instead it appears that the American editors rushed the book into print "as is" in the wake of the unexpected success of the book in Britain and to benefit from it. No harm in that, of course. Business is business.

Though I am not a penny pincher I must say that, like MAL, I regret having bought the book.

I don't remember seeing the term "Opal Fruits" in the book, and didn't know what it meant until I looked at the link you provided. That must be strictly British, because our girls loved "Starbursts" when they were kids, and they're in their mid-to-late 40s now. So they're certainly not new in this country.

This discussion has been a good learning experience. I've heard people's likes and dislikes. I am distrubed over the tone of some recent posts about pet peeves which occurred despite the heading caution "Remember that YOUR pet peeve may be somebody else's cherished idiosyncracy and tread lightly".

Ginny doesn't care for emoticons (except she does use ? as an emoticon), acronyms, abbreviations. Ginny describes her feelings for these things and says 'barf, turns my stomach, please spare us, stupid, abominations, horrendous, cutesy, cloying, the Winky Dink...snotty nasty thing, Aren't we a little old for secret clubs with secret handshakes and languages?, I mean no disrespect or anything else but....'

I don't use emoticons and acronyms, except for IMO (in my opinion) and Traude uses IMHO (in my humble opinion) but I am annoyed and feel disrespected by such comments.

Ginger uses emoticons, although she's probably afraid to do so now, and she's always been kind and considerate. I did have to ask Ginger what some of those codes meant (LOL, ROFLOL, BG and the picture emoticons) but I stopped worrying about them once I realized they were substitutes for voice inflection and facial expressions. I still don't know what most of the emoticons and popular acronyms means but that's alright. I never thought to take offense at a smiley emoticon of all things. Life's too short and there are plenty of ill-mannered people around without worrying about a smiley or a wink. Good grief, Charley Brown!

I've already talked about pet peeves but another one was born with the heading questions which were so biased, of the "When did you stop beating your wife?" variety, that open communication was destroyed. The questions invited answers only from those readers who disliked the book.

I give the discussion 1 star and the book 4 stars.

Marvelle

There were things I'd criticize about the book, and would like to have done so, but not in this discussion.

Marvelle

Aw, gee, MARVELLE, lighten up a little, why don't you? GINNY does more for Books and Lit, and coincidentally SeniorNet, than anybody here and almost anyone else I know. GINNY has every right to say what she did when she stated her pet peeves. Never once did it occur to me to think the heading questions were biased toward people who didn't like this book.

GINGER is a wonderfully strong woman who's not going to let anybody knock emoticons or anything else out of her life unless she herself decides they shouldn't be there. My daughter and I met GINGER in Richmond at the Virginia Bash last May, and spent a lovely afternoon with her going through Agecroft Hall, and enjoyed a smoke together afterwards. Then the three of us had a delicious lunch and parted good friends the following Sunday.

I say three cheers for GINNY. Without her, not a single one of us would be here.

Mal

Thank You Marvelle and Mal Everyone has there likes and dislikes and can expres them on S/N as long as they are Not 0ffense to anyone personaly. My life has been such that I love people unless they do me wrong then I still like them but avoid them if possiable, even the rappist asked forgiveness and it was granted as he was about to meet his maker and knew it and died shortly afer I forgave him. I have Never regreted it as I know that I did the right thing.

We can use any emoitions we wish to and Not offend anyone as long as it is clean expression. Smile, Your good friend who Loves both of you and every poster on S/N.

Sorry you feel annoyed and disrespected, Marvelle, by the comments I made on the pet peeves, this IS the time we set aside TO make personal comments on such things as emoticons. Certainly it was not personally intended, you admit you don't use them, yourself. I don't make ad hominem remarks, and certainly did not intend any criticism of any person in this discussion!! Sorry this one did not work out for you.

As far as the "wife beating questions" went, every person here was invited to submit (and has, I believe) any question at all they'd like for the heading, and so the heading reflected the questions the group submitted, and the discussion itself reflects the thoughts of everybody in it. We here are about our honest opinions, about the book anyway, and about our pet peeves also, as directed in the heading. I think none of us have been held back from commenting, and it's always the comments of the group which make the discussion, we've all given ours, and I have really enjoyed reading everybody's submissions and diverse thoughts.

hahaa Maryal, you are a hoot with that Winky Dink! I was expecting that, haha or a bigger one. hahaaa

Thank you Malryn, I agree Ginger is a great person, that's never been in question, and right on, Ginger, thank you for your always uplifting thoughts, and you're dead right: this discussion IS the place to express our thoughts, critical or otherwise, about the book.

Colkot, thanks for letting us know about the book signing, and the tongue in cheek intent, and Mary about the Starbursts, sometimes the British have such super names for candy, but I've always heard Starburst, too. Isn't there also now a TV show called Parkinson Starburst? That's about a different kind of star, I guess, I never realized until today that it was possibly a double entendre!

Pedln, an "addy" apparently is the word for address and IA is incipient Alzheimers. It makes you wonder about using those at all, which I did for effect, when you have to explain what they mean to anybody who looks? And if you don't have to explain I suppose that means, what?? I don't like the implication there, I'm afraid.

Traude, I totallly agree with a lot of what you said in that one! This was interesting, As for the innovative phrases that came with computer use, I have never used hahaha I did not realize that was an innovative computer use, but I believe you are right! And I find myself now suddenly using that in hand written letters and it's VERY hard to write (and feels very stupid) writing hahahaa out? hahahaa

It really looks strange written out in hand.

Well does anybody else have any pet peeves, about grammar, or usage, or punctuation, or internet use or maybe signs you see on the road which have not been covered here? Maybe about phrases you hear daily? One that used to bother me and doesn't any more (and again this may come back to a case of "what's eating YOU?" being at the root of our own pet peeves), but it used to drive me crazy to hear "shop your happy shopping store," or "shop Belks," a local chain of department stores. It used to just drive me up the wall I used to scream you can't "shop Belks, shop is intransitive." I had looked it up in the dictionary to be sure. BUT...

For years I used to go around, with my Inner Stickler on alert, or maybe what passes for an Inner Stickler, and bristle at the tv ads. But you know what? I just looked it up to be sure here, in a bigger dictionary, and guess what? It has an transitive form, too, and so is NOT incorrectly used, after all! Who knew?

Good thing I got over it hahahaa, I was wrong. And that was a really good lesson, it seems that no matter how right WE may be sure we are in something, there's always another viewpoint. And English grammar is so....what can you say? LOOK at the rules for the apostrophe, that section on the names of Bibical figures, there's always always another viewpoint. It makes me wonder how many of our other pet peeves or annoyances might also be wrong?

So the point I was trying to make earlier in my post on pet peeves IS, that maybe what annoys US tells more about US than the misuse does. That's a pretty good thing to learn from reading a book, I think.

Any final thoughts??

Ginny--Ah, yes indeed. In the last part of your post, you discussed having a former pet peeve and then realizing that "shop" could take an object.

I think that's the problem with pet peeves. Once one starts expressing them, one makes mistakes, or will be called on other mistakes (or pet peeves) because everyone becomes hyperalert and frantic.

Perhaps it's all the years in the classroom; I feel more or less immune to most errors or personal tics.

As for the book--it's a fun read for me, but the tone is inconsistent and the little information bites were often more interesting to me than whatever point Truss was making. I loved the history bits myself.

So I give it a qualified three stars (***)--which is not an emoticon.

Maryal

hahaah I KNEW IT, I was waiting for it! hahahaa

I wonder, too, if this is what getting older means? The small stuff seems to pale in comparison to what really means something, that's why the term peeve is so apt, perhaps? hahahaah

I guess I'd give the book *** 1/2. I enjoyed her pointing out punctuation errors that have always bothered me - you know how great it is when somebody agrees with you 8^) [sorry about that Ginny - I wear glasses]. And, I thought she did it in a humorous manner. At least, I got a lot of laughs out of it. As I've said before, I never thought she intended it to be the ultimate authority and reference book on punctuation.

Incipient Alzheimers!!! Never in my wildest imaginings -- the best I could come up with was Intelligence Artificial.

But, hey (is that anyone's pet peeve) I'll stick with my original 4 stars -- altho I'll probably say nasty things about Truss every time I try to remember outside or inside for "inverted commas" -- do Americans call them that too.

If nothing else, we should give Truss some points for her bibliography. Too bad she didn't provide an index.

Pedln: I'd not heard the term "inverted commas" for quotation marks. I have heard students, who couldn't think of "quotation marks," say "high up double commas"...;o) {gad zooks...the dreaded winky dink!!}

jane

Jane--Your Winky dink has a round nose?

My Winky has a nose too, but it is just a line.

Like this:

Quotation marks are called just that in the USA.

I've read about "inverted commas" in novels.

I love "high up double commas." Kids always find a way.

And one more, just for Ginny

Hmmmm, shall we discuss the virtues and evils of the round--nosed Winky Dinks, versus the straight-lined WDs? Or not??? And then there are the winking Winky Dinks, versus the straight-arrow, no teasing, no fun WDs.

;0)

I think emoticons deserve noses, whether round or linear. It makes them look more human.

Have you noticed how wide-eyed and In-No-Cent regular smiley looks?

Not a clue in his head, especially if you don't give him a nose.

I must admit, I like the ^ for a nose.

Hmmmmmm, as Jane has said. Smiley needs a nose. Try ^.

:^) :^o

jeez louise, it's something else to see the disentegration of an entire discussion!

Hahaha

*) I have bangs over one eye.

(=_=)

Ginny, I really like the blue guy on the bottom

(=_=)

Looks kinda like an alien?

I am using Ginny's emoticon ??????s?

hahaha Catchy, aren't they? Would you believe I read your post and thought nothing of it? Didn't even SEE them? hahahaa

This is fascinating, isn't it? I got up thinking that it reminds me of those cave paintings of primitive man. He didn't have any language (or written language?) so he drew pictures in caves on the walls (and they were better than I could do) to indicate what he was seeing. Language development is a fascinating thing, I'd like to study it more some day.

The day we were going to communicate only in acronyms and emoticons in this discussion I found out it's almost impossible, severely limiting your ability to communicate: the visible sound byte, I guess.

I don't consider, tho I know it's been advanced here several times, the question marks I use AS emoticons, I rather consider them as Faulkner considered punctuation.

I finished up The Sound and the Fury last night, for my class this morning and I can't help but see huge pages that go something like this:

Faulkner and I am certainly no Faulkner has entire pages with no punctuation of any kind done very deliberately for a reason and they are quite striking and they do make a point it's quite difficult to do effectively but he does it very well while I think of my use of the question mark in the same way as was described on page 202 to make a point and it seems to me that the emoticon or smiley face or acronym is used for quite a different reason it's almost an afterthought and seems to qualify what went before to me it's tedious to have to make symbols or go find symbols in a written medium but whatever floats your boat maybe someday like the ancient Egyptians we will have an entire dictionary of symbols to communicate with on the internet and we can forget words and at that point the internet will have what can you say completely set communication back to the stone age

:-0

I think of emoticons in a totally different way. They are a way of putting some inflection/tone/facial expression into a message that has no other means to convey humor/teasing/joshing. In a formal letter we don't normally write in a teasing/humorous way so there's no need. In an informal letter, I recall putting in things like (I'm just kidding, of course) or some such explanation to make sure I wasn't misunderstood. On the internet, we usually are even less formal, and the emoticons help to clarify without requiring yet more explanation. It's a shorthand to inflection/facial expression.

I find those who write 167 word sentences to be examples of poor writing. Yes, even if it's Faulkner. If the purpose of writing is to express a writer's thoughts to me, then Faulkner and those authors who write that way fail miserably. Maybe I'm cursed with a very short attention span, but by the time I get to the end of that sentence, I've totally lost all thought of what is being said.

So, in fiction I shall continue to be attracted to authors whose writings I can follow with ease. I was taught years ago that if you can't explain your ideas clearly, they're not clear to you. It's hard to break away from that. Convoluted writing does not impress me as a complex, admirable thought process or the author as a complex, intellectual being. I think the writer is confused and unable to express himself clearly. If I have to go back and read something two, three, four times to try and grasp what the author is saying, I consider that to be poor writing.

jane

"maybe someday like the ancient Egyptians we will have an entire dictionary of symbols to communicate with on the internet"
The regression has already begun!! Have you not ever opened the Character Map and looked at WingDings, WingDings2, and WingDings3??? This may well be the future of the Computer Internet Language!!!
JL JL

Theron

Theron--You seem to be of two minds about emoticons. Your text indicates that you see a disintegration here, but the little emoticons you put at the bottom (which resemble the tragedy and comedy masks of the ancient Greeks) serve to put you squarely on the fence: happy/sad happy/sad.

Ginny--Good to hear that you have accomplished the reading of The Sound and the Fury. Did you notice that the novel gets much easier to read after you finish sections one and two (Benjy and Quentin)? I love Jason's section--evil evil man and a whining child he is, and section 4 (generally referred to as Dilsey's section although she does not narrate it) has always been transcendent for me. No real solution to the Compson family tragedy, but Dilsey sees hope in her faith which she holds tight too. The scene Easter Sunday morning with Dilsey and Benjy in church is magnificent. If you read the visiting preacher's sermon out loud, you can almost believe that you are in a small Baptist church in Mississippi.

Did you notice that with the exception of Quentin's section, set the day he committed suicide, that the present action of the novel is an Easter weekend in 1929? Benjy's section is Easter Saturday, Jason's section is Good Friday, and the final section is Easter Sunday.

Maryal

Deems; I am all for the "Computer Shortcuts" if they are properly used! My post was referencing the quote from Ginny's post.

Theron

I did not realize that, Maryal, no, until I went to class today where she covered all of it,. I'm afraid, like Jane says, the entire pages of Quentin's, for instance, speeches without punctuation, (for those of you not familiar with the Sound and the Fury, different narrators take over parts of the story with no explanation), particularly

...and he we must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while its not always and i it doesn't have to be even that long for a man of courage and he do you consider that courage i yes sir dont you and he everyman is the arbiter of his own virtues

made my eyes glaze and I missed, apparently that Father was an alcoholic all the time? I did not know that! I mean not before Quintin!

So in that Jane is right. On the other hand, IF I need to put a face or a qualifier then it would seem (and Jane knows I'm the world's worst) I should (this is only my opinion) take more time with what I write in the first place, to make it clear that I don't mean any offense. But sometimes that's not possible and I myself have noticed that if you get serious on the internet there is a LOT of potential to be misunderstood. Wonder why THAT is?

But life is like that too?

Maybe it's not possible without some sort of indication here, as we write here so quickly and as if we were speaking, (which the professor also said Faulkner was doing.) (Apparently there was a big Faulkner celebration where people assembled this past weekend at Faukner's home recently reopened in Oxford Miss, she had been, and they read Absalom, Absalom thru without stopping, 10 minutes per reader, apparently it was something else!)