Eats, Shoots & Leaves

"A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So, punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionelly a matter of life and death.

                                       
Image:ES&L.png

Detta kan tyckas vara den ultimata tråkboken - en bok om engelsk grammatik. Men det är den absoulut inte!! Det är lätt en av de mest underhållande böckerna jag läst på senare tid. Grammatik är ju annars ett ämne som lätt blir väldigt tråkigt men inte här. Olika typer av punctuation behandlas i 7 olika kapitel, det ena mer intressant än det andra. Lynne Truss skriver på ett sätt som håller en intresserad genom hela boken.

Tänkte ge er ett kort avsnitt ur boken. Sid. 129-130 ur kapitlet "Airs and Graces"


"See how the sense changes with the punctuation in this example:

Tom locked himself in the shed. England lost to Argentina.

These two statements, as they stand, could be quite unrelated. They merely tell you two thing´s have happened, in the past tense.

Tom locked himself in the shed; England lost to Argentina.

We can infer from the semicolon that these events occurred at the same time, although it is possible that Tom locked himself in the shed because he couldn't bear to watch the match and therefore still doesn't know the outcome. With the semicolon in place, Tom locking himself in the shed and England losing to Argentina sound like two things that really got on the nerves of someone else. "It was a terrible day, Mum: Tom locked himself in the shed; England lost to Argentina; the rabbit electrocuted itself by biting into the power cable of the washing machine."

Tom locked himself in the shed: England lost to Argentina.

All is now clear. Tom locked himself in the shed because England lost to Argentina. And who can blame him, that's what I say."

Kommentarer
Postat av: Olov

Jag hoppas jag får elever som dig, som uppskattar värdet i korrekt grammatik. :P

2008-05-05 @ 16:51:33
URL: http://backspegel.blogg.se/

Kommentera inlägget här:

Namn:
Kom ihåg mig?

E-postadress: (publiceras ej)

URL/Bloggadress:

Kommentar:

Trackback
RSS 2.0