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Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
by Lynne Truss

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8600.Eats_Shoots_Leaves_The_Zero_Tolerance_Approach_to_Punctuation?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Eats, Shoots &amp; Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/photo.goodreads.com/books/1165672357m/8600.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8600.Eats_Shoots_Leaves_The_Zero_Tolerance_Approach_to_Punctuation?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5571.Lynne_Truss">Lynne Truss</a> 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/15281614?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
 rating: 3 of 5 stars Amusing. Pretentious. British. It shook my confidence, until I realized that I knew all of this from the get-go, and have intentionally been ignoring it for the sake of art. I write like I think, and I think in text. Defying convention has always been my strong point, after all. 
 Even then, I think I do a better job at writing in English as it is meant to be written than most people, and I can’t deny that it was gratifying to read a book by someone even more hung up on the finer points of language than I. It really put things back into proportion for me.
 
 	“Having grown up as readers of the printed word (and possibly even scribblers in margins), we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading – so let us remind ourselves. The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order. We read privately, mentally listening to the writer’s voice and translating the writer’s thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.
 
 	All these conditions for reading are overturned by the new technologies. Information is presented to us in a non-linear way, through an exponential series of lateral associations. The internet is a public “space” which you visit, and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied. Scrolling documents is the opposite of reading: your eyes remain static, while the material flows past. Despite all the opportunities to “interact”, we read material from the internet (or CD-roms, or whatever) entirely passively because all the interesting associative thinking has already been done on our behalf. Electronic media are intrinsically ephemeral, are open to perpetual revision, and work quite strenuously against any sort of historical perception. The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value. Finally, you can’t write comments in the margin of your screen to be discovered by another reader fifty years down the line.”
 
 First off, my “inner stickler” would like to point out that it should be “CD-ROM”, as it’s actually an acronym for “compact disc- read only memory”. “Internet” should be capitalized, even though common usage has recently dictated otherwise.
 Second, didn’t she just write an entire book about how editing itself is a crapshoot and you can’t really put your faith in it too much? We’ve all seen typographical errors in books; even Truss mentions them somewhere around the beginning of the book.
 However, I think her thesis is sound. We are seeing a general decay, not only in the quality of the language, but in the quality of the minds which experience and produce it. The Internet has many useful research outlets, but for the most part, it goes one step further in making media something which affects us, and not something which we effect. Odd, considering that the entire concept of self-publication should do just the opposite. I wrote a good rant about this once, but I think it’s been lost to the selfsame Internet by which it was inspired.
 
 <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/901936?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Danger's review
rating:
bookshelves: language, reference-or-non-fiction
recommended for: Those who are really good at English and frustrated, and those who suck terribly and need pointers.

Amusing. Pretentious. British. It shook my confidence, until I realized that I knew all of this from the get-go, and have intentionally been ignoring it for the sake of art. I write like I think, and I think in text. Defying convention has always been my strong point, after all.
Even then, I think I do a better job at writing in English as it is meant to be written than most people, and I can’t deny that it was gratifying to read a book by someone even more hung up on the finer points of language than I. It really put things back into proportion for me.

“Having grown up as readers of the printed word (and possibly even scribblers in margins), we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading – so let us remind ourselves. The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order. We read privately, mentally listening to the writer’s voice and translating the write...more Amusing. Pretentious. British. It shook my confidence, until I realized that I knew all of this from the get-go, and have intentionally been ignoring it for the sake of art. I write like I think, and I think in text. Defying convention has always been my strong point, after all.
Even then, I think I do a better job at writing in English as it is meant to be written than most people, and I can’t deny that it was gratifying to read a book by someone even more hung up on the finer points of language than I. It really put things back into proportion for me.

“Having grown up as readers of the printed word (and possibly even scribblers in margins), we may take for granted the processes involved in the traditional activity of reading – so let us remind ourselves. The printed word is presented to us in a linear way, with syntax supreme in conveying the sense of the words in their order. We read privately, mentally listening to the writer’s voice and translating the writer’s thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.

All these conditions for reading are overturned by the new technologies. Information is presented to us in a non-linear way, through an exponential series of lateral associations. The internet is a public “space” which you visit, and even inhabit; its product is inherently impersonal and disembodied. Scrolling documents is the opposite of reading: your eyes remain static, while the material flows past. Despite all the opportunities to “interact”, we read material from the internet (or CD-roms, or whatever) entirely passively because all the interesting associative thinking has already been done on our behalf. Electronic media are intrinsically ephemeral, are open to perpetual revision, and work quite strenuously against any sort of historical perception. The opposite of edited, the material on the internet is unmediated, except by the technology itself. And having no price, it has questionable value. Finally, you can’t write comments in the margin of your screen to be discovered by another reader fifty years down the line.”

First off, my “inner stickler” would like to point out that it should be “CD-ROM”, as it’s actually an acronym for “compact disc- read only memory”. “Internet” should be capitalized, even though common usage has recently dictated otherwise.
Second, didn’t she just write an entire book about how editing itself is a crapshoot and you can’t really put your faith in it too much? We’ve all seen typographical errors in books; even Truss mentions them somewhere around the beginning of the book.
However, I think her thesis is sound. We are seeing a general decay, not only in the quality of the language, but in the quality of the minds which experience and produce it. The Internet has many useful research outlets, but for the most part, it goes one step further in making media something which affects us, and not something which we effect. Odd, considering that the entire concept of self-publication should do just the opposite. I wrote a good rant about this once, but I think it’s been lost to the selfsame Internet by which it was inspired.
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