The hunter is now the hunted

Oooh, punctuation-related drama! I just eat this stuff up.

NYT book critic lambastes the author of “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” for punctuation errors …

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoot & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynn Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.

… and goes on to make a wider assertion:

Though she has persuaded herself otherwise, Truss doesn’t want people to care about correctness. She wants them to care about writing and about using the full resources of the language. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is really a “decline of print culture” book disguised as a style manual (poorly disguised). Truss has got things mixed up because she has confused two aspects of writing: the technological and the aesthetic.

Sure do wish my library would get a copy of this book, so I could make up my own mind. [Via idletype’s waxy sidebar.]

June 23, 2004 | Filed Under neuroses