British author, humorist, TV personality and punctuation champion Lynne Truss will give a Brigham Young University forum address titled “Is This the End of Literacy?” Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 11:05 a.m. in the Marriott Center.
Her number-one international best seller, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” spent 46 weeks on The New York Times best seller list and sold three million copies worldwide.
Though known in the U.K. as a broadcaster, journalist and novelist, in the United States Truss is happy to be known mainly as “a grouch, or at least a champion of horrified polite people.” She followed her zero-tolerance approach to punctuation with a zero-tolerance manual on bad behavior, “Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or, Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door,” where she addresses everything from cell phone exhibitionism to people walking four abreast on the sidewalk. It was also a New York Times best seller.
Truss spent six years as a television critic for The Times of London, followed by four years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper. Additionally, she won Columnist of the Year for her work in Woman’s Journal. A familiar voice on the BBC’s Radio 4, Lynne Truss also hosted “Cutting a Dash,” a popular series about punctuation. She lives in Brighton, England.
This forum will be broadcast live on BYU Broadcasting channels. Visit byub.org/devotionals or speeches.byu.edu for rebroadcast information, as well as archived devotional audio, video and transcripts.
Writer: Brady Toone
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