Words Are Fun

Grant Wentzel

To each their own.

If you like sports, read Sports Illustrated. If you’ve got the entrepreneurial bug, check out Fast Company.  And if you think words are fun, pick up Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Much as I get a hankering for some Strunk & White from time to time, there’s something far more entertaining about the way that Ms. Truss goes about pausing to consider the placement of a comma. Indeed, I learned a thing or two.

For instance: Did you know that the British call a period a “full stop”? Mind blowing! Made me feel like Albert Hofmann after a hard day in the lab.

It has made blogging a little tougher on the noggin. Whereas my thoughts used to flow to the page with the grace and agility of a teenage Marylou Retton, I’m now constantly stuttering upon the keyboard debating both the accuracy and necessity of every minor mark, each stroke stuck in sacrifice to the gods of grammar, lest they damn me for running on a sentence too long.

Who me?

Overall I found the British/American usage debates interesting, agreeing more with those across the pond than with the rules passed down to me from generations of jingoistic grammarians. I’m bound to lose on that one. It’s only a matter of time until we’re all speakin’ ‘Merican.

And I got to toy with the Oxford Comma a little longer. Life is good.

One Reply to “Words Are Fun”

  1. Grant, it makes me sad that you are moving away. You apparently listen to the same music I listen to and read the same books that I read.

    Do they have the Internet in South Dakota yet?

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