Garner, Menand, and Truss

Good reading: two devastating appraisals of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (2003), by Bryan A. Garner and Louis Menand.

Idle and curious, I looked at Truss’s book in the library a few weeks ago and found myself stopping short at the subtitle, which should read The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It was downhill from there.

[Sheer, strange coincidence: Garner’s Usage Tip of The Day (taken from Garner’s Modern American Usage) has just hit punctuation. Today’s tip concerns the apostrophe. You can subscribe here (bottom right). The Garner link above is now dead.]