Does it drive you crazy when people can’t tell the difference between their, there, and they’re?
Do you do a slow burn when someone puts an apostrophe where it doesn’t belong?
If you’re a Millennial or Gen Z, are you offended when your parents put a period at the end of their text?
Punctuation, grammar, and spelling matter a lot to many people, maybe moreso than they will admit. In fact, some proudly wear the mantle of “stickler.”
British author and journalist Lynne Truss is a stickler, and proud of it. And about 20 years ago she tapped into a whole vein of sticklers, first in Great Britain, then in the US, with her book Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
And suddenly people were openly expressing their disdain at misspelled signs, badly punctuated emails, and the general lack of literacy.
More below video:
I met Lynne in 2004 when she was on a US book tour.
so here now, from 2004, Lynne Truss.
Lynne Truss will be 70 in May. And yes, I ran AI punctuation, spelling and grammar checks on this script.