Eats, Shoots & Leaves — Lynne Truss
I finally read eats, shoots & leaves; a book about punctuation, clarity, restraint; and the quiet moral stakes of the comma.
It is, genuinely, very good—witty; learned; humane—and it has the unfortunate side effect of making you want to deploy punctuation responsibly; and then; almost immediately; irresponsibly; for sport.
Reading it, I found myself thinking: yes; of course punctuation matters—meaning accrues; drifts; collapses; entire worlds hinge on a mark—and yet there is something deeply comic about insisting upon this with such civility; such care; such faith in order.
The book argues (correctly!) that punctuation is not decoration; but sense; not fuss; but structure; not pedantry; but care. And then it dares you—silently; politely—to prove you understood it by punctuating like someone who knows exactly what they’re doing; and is enjoying it; perhaps too much.
I finished it feeling both instructed; and slightly unhinged; which seems; to me; the ideal outcome.
The em dash—used sparingly; except; obviously; here.
