
Gift for a Teacher: a Punctuation Book
Q. Nobody
knows punctuation any more. How can we inspire teachers to emphasize the
importance of writing correctly?
Give them a book! There's a wonderful, humorous
book that has a great chance of getting teachers "hooked" on emphasizing the
importance of punctuation with their students. It's cheap and useful enough to
buy one for every teacher . . . and certainly one for yourself and your child.
It's called "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero
Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," by British writer Lynne Truss.
It's practical, funny, and best of all, it's
inexpensive - available for around $5, if you buy it used through an online
store such as www.amazon.com
She implores "sticklers" to unite and save a
"system of printers' marks that has aided the clarity of the written word for
the past half-millennium."
It's not just out of perfectionism that this is
important, she writes. "The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without
it there is no reliable way of communicating reason."