In today’s society, the invention of the internet has a profound effect in transitioning the English Language from a written language to a primarily typed language. Consequently, people heavily rely on autocorrect to fix their orthographical and grammatical mistakes because they have grown accustomed to it (autocorrect). This would suggest that they forget or do not bother to remember the correct spellings of words and rules of grammar. In the English grammar book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the author, Lynne Truss, emphasizes the importance of the proper usage of particular punctuation marks, which includes but is not limited to the apostrophe, the comma, and dashes along with the difference between American English and British English punctuation.
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She says, “There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don’t” (Truss 84). The controversy is whether or not to use a comma before the conjunction “and” and the final item/object in a list. A perfect example would be the title of this book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, in which the Truss argues that an oxford comma is not necessary. Furthermore, even when the writer does use an oxford comma, there can still be a problem on how to interpret the sentence. She provides two sentences with the same exact words but with a different word order (syntax), the meaning can be different as a result. The first sentence is “I went to the chemist, Marks & Spencer, and NatWest” (Truss 85), whereas, the second sentences is “I went to NatWest, the chemist, and Marks & Spencer” (Truss 85). One might assume that the chemist is Marks & Spencer, treating them both as the same place, in which there are just two distinct places, the pharmacy (chemist, when a noun is lowercased, it is not a proper noun) and the bank. Nevertheless, this is contradictory to the second sentence, in which there are three easily distinguishable locations, all separate from one another. Due to the fact that Truss is an English author (from the UK), her audience can relate to her, she provides appropriate (everyday) examples so that they feel a personal connection that she is one of them, just like them. Knowing that, the audience should not be discouraged to learn proper punctuation
She says, “There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don’t” (Truss 84). The controversy is whether or not to use a comma before the conjunction “and” and the final item/object in a list. A perfect example would be the title of this book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, in which the Truss argues that an oxford comma is not necessary. Furthermore, even when the writer does use an oxford comma, there can still be a problem on how to interpret the sentence. She provides two sentences with the same exact words but with a different word order (syntax), the meaning can be different as a result. The first sentence is “I went to the chemist, Marks & Spencer, and NatWest” (Truss 85), whereas, the second sentences is “I went to NatWest, the chemist, and Marks & Spencer” (Truss 85). One might assume that the chemist is Marks & Spencer, treating them both as the same place, in which there are just two distinct places, the pharmacy (chemist, when a noun is lowercased, it is not a proper noun) and the bank. Nevertheless, this is contradictory to the second sentence, in which there are three easily distinguishable locations, all separate from one another. Due to the fact that Truss is an English author (from the UK), her audience can relate to her, she provides appropriate (everyday) examples so that they feel a personal connection that she is one of them, just like them. Knowing that, the audience should not be discouraged to learn proper punctuation