Thursday, July 22, 2004
Picture Linda Nylind - Guardian.
The Melbourne Age reporter Jane Sullivan has this excellent report on Lynne Truss the "Grammar Bitch" of the UK. I see the written and verbal word as a sign of our time, very flexible and fluid, but out in the noddy world of the outdated pedantic tribes who try and hold onto past practice any change to the Queens grammar is seen as a sin. These rules have served us well yet time tells us to move on, evolve and change. I wonder how they get their little heads around computer lingo and the youth of Australia with all these old rules. We all make mistakes or look for the easy path out and through these conventions we get the change we need. The main thrust of any change world is to keep people thinking, interested and having some input.
"A transatlantic squabble has erupted over claims Lynne Truss's diatribe against flawed grammar has a few clangers of its own. By Jane Sullivan. It had to happen. Lynne Truss, the new high priestess of punctuation, who goes into shock every time she sees a rogue apostrophe, has been caught out dealing in dodgy commas.
"Doubtful, distracting and unwarranted commas" turn up throughout the English writer's best-selling manifesto on punctuation, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The comma is employed "as the mood strikes" and is sometimes absent when it should be present."
Read The Full Report - CLICK
Dodgy commas and apostrophes spell a breach of Truss
The Age, Australia - Jul 16, 2004
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