Shorts

Kaavya continued

Should you care -- and I'm not at all sure that you should -- Galleycat has more on the Kaavya Viswanathan affair. First, a more or less anonymous but easily unmasked Harvard staff member says that Kaavya nodded off in class. And then the lady herself apologises. Oh, and whole lot more. If you have the patience.

Personally I stick to my original view of 24 February 2006, namely that if you're in a commercial business it makes sense to construct and market books on commercial lines. It makes sense in principle, that is. In this case, those who did the constructing seem to have fucked up. It looks like a case of plain old-fashioned incompetence, compunded by stupidity. With which I have no patience whatever.

Punctuation

Publishers Lunch carried a mention (ad?) for a new book on punctuation for creative writers. A lot of people seem to think highly of it.

Should you need any help with punctuation, the Concise Oxford Dictionary has a section at the back (most people don't even know it's there) which gives a succinct guide to usage. And for a more thorough treatment, I have never found anything to beat Sir Ernest Gowers's 50+-year-old Plain Words (still in print).

And, of course, don't forget Lynne Truss's famous book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves. The Guardian (link from booktrade.info) offers the opportunity to download a video of Lynne trying to convince schoolkids that they ought to find out where the commas go. Sounds like brick wall and head stuff to me, although at one time I used to do it for a living.