SarahJanet's Books

Eats, Shoots and Leaves

I know, it's hard to believe I haven't read this already. I just never got around to it, I guess, despite the fact that my mother owns it. But I guess my grammar nerd tendencies are well known enough that I got two copies of it for Christmas.

Anyway, I'm finally working my way through it, and it is definitely one of the better grammar books I've read. It's very entertaining and written in an understandable way, but it doesn't talk down to people who do know a lot about punctuation, which is nice.

Plus, it's forcing me to contemplate the ways in which I use (and overuse) punctuation. I like to think I have a pretty good variety of punctuation in regular use, but I know all too well that I overuse parentheses and dashes, and underuse the semi-colon. I'm sorry, semi-colon; it's not that I don't love you, it's just that you intimidate me sometimes and most of my writing these days is lazy online writing. Back in the days of my writing classes, I used them all the time. I've been neglecting you, my semi-colon friend.

I miss my writing classes.

You'll notice I haven't been reading much lately. I must admit, it's because I've been almost exclusively reading my Disneyland guide book in anticipation of my upcoming trip. Stay tuned to the regular journal at http://sarahjanet.diaryland.com for updates on that!

Just as an administrative note: it was pointed out that it would be easier if I used the title of the book I was talking about as the title of the entry, so I've switched over to that format. In cases where I'm talking about more than one book, I'll just use the first as the title.

posted by SarahJanet @ 5:51 PM