Source:
Menand, Louis. "Bad Comma: Lynn Truss's Strange Grammar." The New Yorker 28 June 2004: 102-4.
Quotes and Observations:
1. "An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is like an American lecturing French on sauces. Some of Truss's departures from punctuation norms are just British laxness. In a book that pretends to be all about firmness, though, this is not a good excuse. The main rule in grammatical form is to stick to whatever rules you start with, and the most objectionable thing about Truss's writing is its inconsistency" (Menand 102).
I liked the analogy with the Englishwoman and French. I found it somewhat ironic because Truss's original audience wasn't the Americans, it was the British.
2. "Using the relatively small number of symbols on the keyboard, you can record, store, and communicate a virtually infinite range of information, and encode meanings with virtually any degree of complexity. The system works entirely be relationships- the relationship of one symbol to another, of one word to another, of one sentence to another. The function of most punctuation-commas, colons and semicolons, dashes, and so on- is to help organize the relationships among the parts of a sentence. Its role is semantic: to add precision and complexity to meaning. It increases the information potential of strings of words" (Menand 103).
I found this part of the article very informative because although the audience is not given Truss's exact opinion on grammar, the author of this article states precisely how he feels about the need for punctuation.
3. "There are writers loved for their humor who are not funny people, and writers admired for their eloquence who swallow their words, never look you in the eye, and can't seem to finish a sentence. Wisdom on the page correlates with wisdom in the writer about as frequently as a high batting average correlates with a high I.Q.: they just seem to have very little do do with one another" (Menand 104).
Although there may be some truth to this statement, if I were a baseball player, I would be offended. By this statement, the author somewhat puts himself down because he is making an offensive statement about writers, which he is. Also, in formal writing, isn't a grammar rule not to use contractions?
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2 comments:
I liked your comments on the third quote. You caught the author making a mistake which I did not catch. I find that pretty funny. I also would be offended if I was a baseball player. That makes me want to know what experience made him target baseball players instead of other athletes.
that third quote always stands out to me every time that i read it. I think its so strange how someone who could write the funniest thing i've ever read could be the creepiest and sketchiest person on the planet. I wish I could put funny thoughts down on paper...but sadly i cannot
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