despite the erratic trend of my attention span lately, i couldn't help but muse over a couple of gems from "Shoots, Eats & Leaves" by Lynne Truss, a witty but incisive bible-of-sorts for hapless copy editors.
bottomline, i like ms. truss's elegant way of stating the seemingly obvious but often overlooked realities when people try to frame half-formed chaotic ideas into words. the following excerpt, which ms. truss credits to another writer, struck me as particularly apt:
Punctuation marks are the traffic signals that tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
Consider the consequences of mispunctuation (i'm quoting ms. truss here):
A woman, without her man, is nothing
seems straightforward enough... until you try to see things from a different angle -- through a judicious placement of several punctuation marks:
A woman: without her, man is nothing
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