A fun blog entry! (I do love my exclamation point!)

Two-in-one again from Truss's Eats, Shoots & Leaves

1)

"'Hang on, this writing's gone all wobbly'?"(146). paired with

Sophia asked Lord Fellamar if he was "out of his senses". (British)

Sophia asked Lord Fellamar if he was "out of his senses." (American) (153).

   When I read the first line I said to myself Wait a minute...I thought the question mark was supposed to go inside the quotation marks.  Oh crap, I'll never remember that!  I then read the second thing about the difference between the Brits and US I was obviously relieved.  I have to admit that sometimes I'm extremely confused by Truss's Britishness, especially her spelling.  I've NEVER claimed to be a good speller and when I see Truss spelling things the British way, I get confused and question my spelling.  Her spelling of the word "capitalisation" and "organisation" and such really upset me because I second guessed my own spellings of things.

2)

"That's why they came up with the emoticon, too-the emoticon being the greatest (or most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne" (192).

   I chose this quote for several stupid reasons.  First of all, I love the word emoticon.  It's such a fancy word for such as simple concept.  Second, I have a very personal relationship with Charlemagne.  I had to do a group project on Charlemagne.  My friends and I were going to ask random people what they knew about him and decided to get a head start on it with the pizza man.  I asked him, and, to our surprise, the pizza man knew all about Charlemagne and actually lived in France!  The last reason, a legitimate one at that, was that I just really like how Truss wrote this sentence.  I love parenthesis (and hate when people forget to end their parenthesis), and any sentence that has the two words addressed above in it is an awesome sentence!  Truss displays her ability to write, and do it well, about an incredibly boring subject.  The kicker is that she actually makes it interesting.  I think that this book should go on high school English lists because as Katie said, I really could have used this back then.  I don't want my students to go into the SATs and college with bad grammar.  It would make their life so much easier long term.

Side thought...What is with Truss's obsession with the renaming of Opal Fruits to Starburst?

Speaking of punctuation this youtube clip is really funny if you like punctuation and dark humor.  I definately think that Truss would appreciate this one!