Eats, Shoots & Leaves
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Average rating3.7
Anxious about the apostrophe? Confused by the comma? Stumped by the semicolon? Join Lynne Truss on a hilarious tour through the rules of punctuation that is sure to sort the dashes from the hyphens.
We all had the basic rules of punctuation drilled into us at school, but punctuation pedants have good reason to suspect they never sank in. ‘Its Summer!’ screams a sign that sets our teeth on edge. ‘Pansy’s ready’, we learn to our considerable interest (‘Is she?’) as we browse among the bedding plants.
It is not only the rules of punctuation that have come under attack but also a sense of why they matter. In this runaway bestseller, Lynne Truss takes the fight to emoticons and greengrocers’ apostrophes with a war cry of ‘Sticklers unite!’
([source][1])
[1]: https://www.lynnetruss.com/books/eats-shoots-leaves/
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This is a book with a pretty specific audience. It's nonfiction, about punctuation – not grammar, not usage generally, but punctuation. It's basically an ode to the stickler. It's pretty short, at a hair over 200 pages, which is for the best. If it went on much longer you wouldn't want to continue.
Each chapter is about a specific punctuation mark, or occasionally two (colon and semicolon), covering the rules about when and how to use each mark. But it's presented mostly in the form of funny essays, so it's not like reading a textbook. (You'd never try to read Strunk and White cover to cover... would you?) You'll also get little asides like the etymology of “O'” in Irish names.
Worth noting that the author is British and writes based on British English, with the occasional note about how it's done in American English, so you'll want to make sure you don't observe the wrong lessons for your side of the pond.
As an English teacher, I had so much fun reading this book! I have never before read such an excellent explanation of the sense of anxiety I feel while reading anything in brackets.
