Title: Some disparate comments
Product review: Truss's book is sometimes clever and sometimes tries too hard to be clever. The author does give generally sensible advice about punctuation, although I'm not planning to increase my use of colons and semicolons on her account.Three disparate comments: 1. The book is too long--consider how much bang Strunk & White got for their buck in 71 pages. 2. The numerous differences between British and Americans terms for, and use of, punctuation probably occurred after the American Revolution but before the modern period; a bit more curiosity on the part of the author would have been helpful here. 3. Perhaps both the popularity of this book and criticism of it reflect a desperate search for certainty somewhere, anywhere, in an intellectual world bent on destroying remaining certainties about things that really matter.
Would you say this review depicts the product in a flattering or unflattering light?
