Here Comes the Punctuation Vigilante

[Elidor]

LONDON (Reuters) - In the land of Shakespeare, punctuation faced extinction until writer Lynne Truss came to the rescue with a clutch of carefully placed commas and colons.

Taking a zero tolerance approach to grammatical lapses, she wrote a sprightly guide to punctuation, "Eats, shoots and leaves," that has sold more than half a million copies in Britain alone and soared to the top of bestseller lists.

Truss, who says she is a stickler for accuracy and not an obsessive pedant, thinks the English have lost touch with the language they invented and gave to the world.

"My sense of it is that British English is worse actually than American English. I think Americans really like rules. I think we in Britain are very slapdash and don't care if we are right or wrong."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=5&u=/nm/20040330/od_nm/punctuation_dc

She's quite the martinet, apparently. I'm more a spelling nazi myself. I scream aloud with rage when I see "truely" or when someone uses "compliment" when they meant "complement."

I'm usually too polite to point out such lapses, but catch me after a few beers and I'll hit you with a spelling lame.