It's heartening, even for a flinty-hearted Spailpín such as myself, to see the success that Lynne Truss is enjoying with Eats, Shoots, and Leaves: A Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Even though I found the tone a little twee, it's rather thrilling to see a book of rules about punctuation leaping off the shelves. Nice to know that there are standards left.
Interesting also to see the effect that here book is having already: only yesterday, An Spailpín was checking the news headlines on the text service on his television, and I discovered a semi-colon nestling happily in a land where previously only the hardy hyphen dared bloom. And it's nice to see that Lynne Truss is a woman that deserves her day in the sun; she wrote a very lovely piece about being being a woman in the men's world of sports reporting in Secrets of the Press: The Penguin Book of Journalism some years ago, and there's an equally lovely profile of her in today's Daily Telegraph. Lynne Truss is a woman that loves the Uniball Pen - is there a greater sign of taste and character?
