Topic: writing-reference

From Ben Yagoda in NY Times: Is it safe to talk about punc­tu­ation again? Eight years ago, Lynne Truss’s best-selling “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” took, in the words of her subtitle, a “Zero Tolerance Approach” to the subject. Although Truss’s focus on errors drew the ire, if not the fire, of gram­marians, linguists and other “descrip­tivists,” her book was, for the most part, harmless and legit­imate. Still, it over­looked a lot. Maybe more than any other element of writing, punc­tu­ation combines rules with issues of sound, pref­erence and personal style. And as Truss didn’t adequately acknowledge, even the rules change over time. The two big players in the field are the period and the comma. I’ll start with the latter because the protocol for comma use is so compli­cated and contingent. · Go to Fanfare for the comma man →