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Thanks to all the readers who have responded to the recent column on awful apostrophes and other grammatical gangsters. I will note a few in coming weeks, though it's going to be hard to top today's, from Queenslander Elaine Waters, who sent in a photograph of a sign in her local Reject Shop: CUSTOMER INFORMATION. WE DO NOT SELL THE SAUCER'S SEPERARLTY. THERE ONLY AVAILIBLE WHEN YOU PURCHACE A PLANTER. Like Elaine, I don't know where to begin rejecting that one. In case you are wondering, in the absence of the photo, what do the purchaced saucer's sit under? The answer is plant pots.
Which is the last funny book to win the Miles Franklin? I don't mean funny-strange like Helen Demidenko's The Hand That Signed the Paper in 1995. I mean funny-funny. Peter Carey likes a joke, and his Dickensian riff Jack Maggs, the most recent of his three winners (1998), has sly and wry moments. But I think the...