Mark My Words: Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why Every Punctuation Mark Counts by Lynne Truss

WILLIAM BROUGHT AN EXTRA LARGE PIZZA.

WILLIAM BROUGHT AN EXTRA-LARGE PIZZA.

Question: Which William brought more pizzas to the party?

Answer: The first William brought at least two large pizzas.

William II brought only one pizza, but at least it was an extra-large size.

Lynne Truss, professor of imperiled punctuation, has published her third book trumpeting her mantra "Every punctuation mark counts!" Author of the best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, and its sequel (reviewed here August 12) The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage without Apostrophes!, Truss' new book, Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, every punctuation mark counts!, takes a critical but comic look at the oft-misunderstood hyphen, quotation marks, parentheses, and even the question mark, exclamation point, and period.

As in her earlier picture-book formatted books, Truss and illustrator Bonnie Timmons utilize the one-frame cartoon layout to combine Truss' clever one liners with the artist's humorous comic interpretations. For example, her left-hand page features a cartoon showing parents dragging a shy and reluctant child to the door of an apartment where a birthday party, complete with helium balloons for each kid, is in apparent full swing. The caption reads

"Where do you think we're taking you? To the dungeons?"

The facing cartoon shows a kid being led by a couple of medieval executioners down into a dark underground prison, with the caption

"Where do you think? We're taking you to the dungeon."

The powers of the quirky quotation mark are displayed in another double-page spread. The first cartoon panel shows a a couple of sleepy kids and a bathrobe-clad mom pointing out a towering pyramid of gifts in front of the Christmas tree, with a caption that says

"Do you know who came last night? Santa Claus!" said my mom.

The opposite panel shows Santa himself pointing out presents stacked around his kitchen bearing the tag "Merry Christmas, From Your Mom" and the caption says

"Do you know who came last night?" Santa Claus said. "My mom!"

Lynne Truss' new book is a bit of brain-buzzing bash for those who love to parse punctuation marks for sport. For those who find fun in such exercises, here's a little sample she offers in her appendix--a short letter to our dear teacher which can be either complimentary or critical, depending on the way we mark it.

Dear Teacher

We want a teacher who knows what punctuation is all about you are clever people who are not like you admit to being horrible at grammar you have ruined us for all other teachers we will do our best for you we stare out of the window whenever you're not around we feel so lucky this is meant to be.
Love,
Tom and Becky

For both official versions as Lynne Truss scores them, just order up a copy of Twenty-Odd Ducks: Why, every punctuation mark counts!.