By: Ella Unguren
If you open up Google and begin typing in the words “why is grammar so…” you will be greeted by several negative suggestive options.
“Why is grammar so annoying?”
“Why is grammar so boring?”
“Why is grammar so hard?”
“Why is grammar so difficult”
And it’s true: grammar can totally suck. However, writing or reading means you will have to interact with, and yes, even use the awful thing in your own life. How can one go about understanding and utilizing grammar when learning about it is one of the most boring and convoluted things ever?
Enter Lynne Truss.
Unlike us grammar-hating plebians, Truss enjoyed the subject enough to have written an entire book on it. Eats, Shoots & Leaves was published in 2006, and has since sold over 3 million copies. That’s a lot of people who want to understand grammar (or who love grammar…and need their heads checked). So, does this book accomplish the impossible and make grammar and punctuation a loveable subject for us haters? I took it upon myself to answer this question myself.
I anticipated two possible outcomes from reading this book: I would fall in love with Truss’s witty teachings and humor, or I would completely hate the whole thing. Unfortunately, all this wishing for an extreme reaction left me at the worst place to be for a book review: I thought it was fine. Meh. Not amazing, not despicable, just okay.
The most enjoyable moment was when Truss scoffed at those who cannot grasp the difference between “it’s” and “its” — “[they] deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave” (44) — to which I said “YEAH!” The least enjoyable part was when she said the comma splice performed by unpublished writers can look “weak or presumptuous,” which, as an avid comma splice lover, hurt my feelings.
While this book was okay to me, when I spoke to my father about it, his opinion was quite different. He explained how before reading Truss, he had thought of punctuation and grammar only within terms of logic and rigid structure. There was no art in punctuation; a semi-colon simply belonged in a sentence, or it did not. However, reading this book opened him up to new ideas about punctuation that have stuck with him for nearly twenty years. Twenty years, people!
That’s why, despite its meh-ness, I think everyone should give this book a try. Whether you enjoy it or hate it or forget about it the day after you read it, read it. If you spend any time at all in your life reading or writing (spoiler alert: you do), then read this book. If it ends up being a dud, at least you can tell people you read a book on punctuation and sound smarter than you are. There’s also a chance that this book will entirely reshape your ideas and mindset involving punctuation. You never know until you try, right?
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