And So's Your Olde Mum

Louis Menand tore Lynne Truss a new one a while back in the New Yorker, and her English fans aren't too happy about that. John Mullan reports to Guardian readers and tries to fight back:

You can hardly blame Menand for hugging himself when he finds the first mistake at the book's very beginning, in its dedication. Here, he delightedly discovers, "a nonrestrictive clause [that] is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there." Does he have a point? He feels no need to tell the New Yorker's notoriously literate readers what a non-restrictive (I like a hyphen there, myself) clause is, but, to judge his attack, you'll need to know.

If you read the New Yorker, I might add, chances are good you do. Mullan further claims, "Misunderstanding the purpose of her book, which is not a style guide but an entertaining 'call to arms', Menand has pedantically reached for a non-existent rule book." First of all, note how the Brit puts his comma outside his quotation mark--which, admittedly, they do over there. Secondly, and more pointedly, what's the good of issuing a call to arms, no matter how entertaining, if you yourself aren't going to make a point of holding up the standard? I mean, how inspiring is "proper punctuation is all well and good, but sometimes I just can't be bothered," really?