Eats, Shoots, & Leaves by Lynne Truss
I first discovered Eats, Shoots and Leaves, by Lynne Truss, while working as an academic librarian in Sweden. I saw a review of it in a trade publication, and since I was responsible for the English language subject collection among other things, I felt like it would be an excellent addition to my library. So, I ordered it and forgot about it. We were the first library in Sweden to order it, though it was already climbing the English bestseller lists. It arrived and began its life as a circulating library book. Several months later, while packing for a move back to the U.S., I received a final package from my mother, containing a copy of the book. She thought I would enjoy it, and she was right!
Subtitled The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, this book is entertaining and informative. Truss, an English writer, journalist, and radio personality, is a self-confessed punctuation stickler. The book was born out of Cutting a Dash, a 2002 radio series on BBC Radio 4 covering punctuation. The small book reads quickly and is highly entertaining. If you are wondering what the title means, you can read the back of the book where this classic anecdote sets the tone for the book:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly-punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation: "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
The book is peppered with similar examples of punctuation misses and also gives the reader insight into the history of various forms of punctuation. It is amazing how much a little speck of ink can change the entire meaning of a sentence. Truss makes seemingly dry language rules entertaining and offers many real-life situations where punctuation has gone awry.
As someone who has always been interested in grammar and punctuation, I thoroughly enjoyed Eats, Shoots and Leaves and recommend it to punctuation sticklers and punctuation sinners alike. The former will find a kindred spirit in Truss, the latter may be able to help reduce the unfortunate abuse of commas, colons, and other punctuation marks that abounds today.