Gift for a Teacher: a Punctuation Book

 

Q. Nobody knows punctuation any more. How can we inspire teachers to emphasize the importance of writing correctly?

 

Give them a book! There's a wonderful, humorous book that has a great chance of getting teachers "hooked" on emphasizing the importance of punctuation with their students. It's cheap and useful enough to buy one for every teacher . . . and certainly one for yourself and your child.

 

It's called "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation," by British writer Lynne Truss.

 

It's practical, funny, and best of all, it's inexpensive - available for around $5, if you buy it used through an online store such as www.amazon.com

 

She implores "sticklers" to unite and save a "system of printers' marks that has aided the clarity of the written word for the past half-millennium."

 

It's not just out of perfectionism that this is important, she writes. "The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating reason."