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admit that grammar is historically informed, both descriptively and prescriptively: that is, both by what people have said and written, and by what people have said and written about what people have said and written. As humans we have an intuition for grammar, but as the variety of different grammars in different languages shows, there are many choices to be made. As children we seem to pick up most of these rules unconsciously, or at the very least, with insufficient formal training. Thus, for example, most English-speaking children will use articles with nouns (Russian doesn't use articles).

However, as the rules get more and more complicated they are less and less well assimilated. Now what is our reason for having these rules? Lynne Truss says for clarity of expression. But how is clarity of expression helped by having arcane rules which have more exceptions (or sub-rules), than it is possible to remember, or detail? Contrary to their avowed aim, we find that punctuation pedants actually obscure and confuse the language.

We see that Lynne truss has asked a different question to that which she is interested in. She answers the question, " Why should there be grammar?" but the question that her pedantry forces on her (which she wisely ignores) is, "Why should we continue to use the grammar we inherited?" To repeat, she never attempts to describe why personal pronouns shouldn't enjoy possessive pronouns company; why one os rejected from the elite status of the possessive pronouns' club; why whose' has an e' on the end; or why, "there are two e's in meter" has an apostrophe after the e, when it indicates neither possession or omission.

Unhappily, Lynne Truss makes the mistake of many apologists, of trying to apologise for all the mistakes, vagaries, and ambiguities of her side' rather than thinking seriously about what good' she is trying to protect. She's like a doctor who, meeting a sick man, tries to cure him, but, faced with an epidemic, simply tells the sick they are well. She gets het up about the missing apostrophe in Two Weeks Notice' but somehow reasons that this means that the English language (her own ideal conception of it) must be protected at every corner. Just because the new is different doesn't mean it's necessarily wrong by any reasonable set of standards. Impressionism may have featured less mixing of paints, and used short, thick strokes, and not used glazes; but this does not invalidate it as an art form unless your definition of art is classical art. And then you need a reason not for the sanctity of art, but for the sanctity of classical art.

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