Eats, Shoots & Leaves

I wanted more!

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.

If you were one of the oddballs who
enjoyed diagramming sentences as a child
or if you get irritated
when you see apostrophe mistakes,
you will like this book. I was surprised
to find myself discussing this book last
night as each of us argued for our
favorite
mark of punctuation. Not an common
event
in my little town.

This guide to punctuation is incredibly helpful and surprisingly funny.

Well - I probably enjoyed this short book more than I should have. While my punctuation is not perfect and my reviews always contain typo's that I only spot years later, I still enjoy a good laugh at terrible punctuation.

Lynne Truss has collected some great punctuation faux pas. But more than that, she has provided relatively simple guidance on how to correctly position those commas, apostrophes, hyphens, and the like. (Points for noticing the Oxford comma (used after the and in a list) which I quite like.) I also like the guidance on how to position the full-stop when dealing with quotation marks or brackets (which I know I tend to over-utilise). Of course, I am paranoid now about every comma, hyphen and apostrophe in this review, as it would have been better just to throw some stars at it and not write a review at all than to cock up the punctuation...

Some quotes:
To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as “Thank God its Friday” (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence.-If you still persist in writing, “Good food at it's best”, you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.-Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?-I apologise if you all know this, but the point is many, many people do not. Why else would they open a large play area for children, hang up a sign saying “Giant Kid's Playground”, and then wonder why everyone stays away from it? (Answer: everyone is scared of the Giant Kid.)-Phrases abound that cry out for hyphens. Those much-invoked examples of the little used car, the superfluous hair remover, the pickled herring merchant, the slow moving traffic and the two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would all be lost without it.

5 stars for its reference value if nothing else!