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"A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"P a n d a. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves." (Truss 2003: cover)
In 2003 Lynn Truss published her best-selling non-fiction book Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Truss apparently tackled the problem of ‘misplaced apostrophes' and other usage issues in such a way that her guide reached the top-ten. Not only is the so-called grocer's apostrophe an important topic to be treated in this course, we will also examine confusables, relative which and that, the contrast between can and may and compare different approaches to usage that line the history of the English language.
Be prepared to pass a reading test during the first session on the chapter "The Tractable Apostrophe" in: Truss, Lynn. 2003. Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. New York: Gotham Books, 35-67. (to be provided after registration) |
