A little treat for the punctuation pedants

[MirandaGoshawk]

The Sunday Telegraph's TV supplement (called Seven) has a new columnist (to replace Sandi Toksvig). Yesterday she was talking about cheese:

"... a plate of runny, room-temperature [cheese] with digestives and bath oliver's at the end of a classy meal..."

Hee hee. And the name of this columnist? Why, it's Lynne Truss!

I don't understand what is a bath Oliver?pmsl at it being lt though

It must be a printing error, surely?

Is it meant to say black olives? If you were lt you'd insist on approving a proof surely?

Bath Olivers are the nicest crackers in the world.

A Bath Oliver is a cheese biscuit. Should be capitalized and (obv) not possessive

oh.

My theory is that it will have been proof read by a proof reader just before printing, who will probably not have heard of Bath Olivers and assumed it was a possessive because it's a proper noun. However that does not excuse the lack of capital! It does excuse Lynn Truss though.

I hate Bath Olivers

[bubiscuit]

I wonder what she thought when she read that

surely a proofreader who has not heard of bath olivers should flag up that the sentence makes no sense! bath oliver's what exactly? Cos after my meal I like to eat cheese and wash a dog belonging to some guy I vaguely know :o

Even if they didn't know what Bath Olivers are, it still doesn't make sense.

Bath Olivers are very good biscuits :)

Ooooh, I haven't read it yet. Hurrah that ST has gone! Column-writing by numbers, anyone?

Lol @ Stealth's dog-washing. No doubt it was the type-setter who was at fault (do they still have that these days?) but LT would be and .

So LT is human after all. I don't feel sorry for people who set themselves up as bossy boots knowtitalls and then something like this happens.

Chocolate Bath Olivers are worth washing somebody's dog for.

Yes, but it didn't say 'dog'. It was bath Oliver's

And which Oliver are we talking about, anyway? Jamie Oliver? (Noooo) Oliver Letwin??

Aha! All becomes clear. It must be Oliver Stanley.
"He was one of the founders of Profile Books in 1996, one of the UK?s largest independent publishers, which came to prominence when it published Lynne Truss?s million-selling ?Eats, Shoots and Leaves? in 2003."

Do you think she washes his dog, then?

After they've had dinner?

Probably best not to enquire, actually