I may be a little behind the times in anouncing this to the world; however, Ms. Lynne Truss has given us a wonderful book. Eats, Shoots & Leaves is hilarious, informative, inspiring, and, above all, permission to unleash my Inner Stickler! This will be my platform to muse on grammar and punctuation; to display the signage horrors I have witnessed; to commune with others who understand the fury created in seeing these things (my husband does not have this reaction). Let's begin with an example I saw yesterday while driving: "New City Builder's." I'm sorry, but New City Builder's what?
My husband did not get as worked up as I did: "Yeah, people just don't think about it." But they shouldn't have to think! It should be automatic to leave out that meaningless apostrophe. I honestly thought the sign was not finished until I realized that this is exactly what Ms. Truss is pointing out it her book. Therefore, I echo her cry: Sticklers Unite! Come, help me pick up the shards of our broken language and attempt to write (especially here on the internet) in a way that is legible to people over the age of 25 -- in a way that is edifying and inspires the reader to write better themselves. Let us be a light to the literary darkness of the internet!
7 comments:
Patty, your passion for grammar is so hot ;)
I agree, Pattys passion for grammar is the following things, awesome; fabulous; attractive; and, inspiring: and we should all try more harder to use are words and punctuation "correctly"...
Oh, one more thing: I love how you say "legible to people over the age of 25." It's funny to me because you're 26!
My favorite part about your first comment is that you used "are" instead of "our" ... wait... there are so many things wrong with your comment that you did that on purpose.
Grrrr...
Yep, you caught me! I couldn't resist, but I promise I won't provoke you anymore. :P
Patty,
Lynn just found this site, and I love it! I'm sure, now that we're out of Chicago, that I won't see nearly as many problematic signs, but I'll do my best.
Now, I know this was your first post and was a while ago, but I need to stickle the stickler a bit. In this post you say "...inspires the reader to write better themselves." Since "reader" is singular you should have put "himself or herself" or used "readers" with "themselves." Ah, singulars and plurals. :)
BTW, I've gotten my wife to be a little more worried about such things, so there is hope for your husband yet!
Oh, Bleys, you're right about the "themselves." I am usually more attentive to these things, but our egalitarian-obsessed culture doesn't like it when we simply say "himself" and leave it at that--and "himself or herself" is so awkward.
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