Linguist Geoff Nunberg (chair of the AHD usage panel and author of
Going Nucular, among others), takes aim at Lynn Truss's best-selling pop grammar book and her predilection for semi-colons:
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/truss.html(originally broadcast on NPR's "Fresh Air")
Like other pop grammarians, she's always addressing her audience as a tiny band of beleaguered partisans who stand between the language and out-and-out barbarism. As in "How long before the last few punctuation sticklers are obliged to take refuge together in caves?"
Sounds like author Truss and "Colin's Colon Coalition" may be headed for a punctuational crisis. I predict it will become known as the "Colonic Wars".
re "Nunberg takes aim at Lynn Truss". Ah, but is his aim true, ASp? That would be good to hear from you.
You know, Nancy, when I heard that on the radio it took me several seconds to parse it!
Ha! Very good words there.
"...someone whose sleep is troubled by a misplaced apostrophe even if it's twenty mattresses down."
And I agree that there are also great points about semicolons!
