The most fun you'll ever have...

...with punctuation.

I just finished reading Lynne Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. (That's right. I read a book about punctuation. I enjoy grammar books too.) This book was not what I expected, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it. It didn't drastically improve my punctuation skills. I did learn a some interesting facts about the history of punctuation. (Aldus Manutius is credited with the first ever semicolon, and he also invented italics!!!) More than anything else, the book increased my appreciation for well-punctuated sentences.

That would be enough to commend the book, but it is also a lot of fun. Read in wonder as Lynne describes the exclamation point (she calls it an exclamation mark, but she's British) in relation to other forms of punctuation:

Ever since it came along, grammarians have warned us to be wary of the exclamation mark, mainly because, even when we try to muffle it with brackets (!), it still shouts, flashes like neon, and jumps up and down. In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

Amazing. If you want to have fun with punctuation, read this book.