Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

This book is wonderfully written and mixes humor with fact in such a way that it is a pleasure to read and learn the things about punctuation you SHOULD have been taught when you were at school. This is an interesting way to learn some of the history behind punctuation and highlights just how much we miss during the essential, early school years. I highly recommend this book to any one with a sense of humor and a love of learning.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

I bought this book as I am undergoing a course in proof reading. Lynn Truss gives an entertaining point of view of the proper use of punctuation. Her presentation should serve very well for anyone to remember the salient points of this art which is vanishing little by little.

This wonderful little book had me laughing out loud. It's not for everyone I suspect, but for those who always notice poor punctuation, whether it be in print or in advertising, it's nice to know there's someone else out there who gets crazy when they see it. My copy now has many highlighted phrases. It makes a great gift if you know someone else who had proper punctuation drilled into them in grammar school.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this is a grammatically correct sentence. Or is it? Along with a profound sense of punctuation paranoia, Lynne Truss's book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves, delivers caustic wit, legitimate humor and intriguing history (Yes, the letter "s" follows an apostrophe after a possessive name ending in "s" - see page 55). I chose this book merely for need of a good grammatical guide in response to several teachers, and, as of this morning: professors, spilling red ink all over my papers as their hearts bled for my miserable lack of grammatical sense. I supposed I'd find a boring how-to manual; what I discovered was a book as fascinating as a novel. Why? Truss weaves actual teaching with wit, style, and an unimaginable number of stories and references masterfully! While not fully confident in my abilities to write a full paragraph with perfect punctuation, by the end of the book I smiled with a newfound delight in grammar and by the end of this introduction I will have used all the marks Lynn Truss discusses in her guide...
She makes you laugh. Far from the simply subtle style of Struck and White in their The Elements of Style, Lynn Truss is laugh out loud funny. She explains the importance of a hyphen by highlighting how "extra-marital sex... is quite a different bunch of coconuts" than extra marital sex (169). Tying humor to grammar instruction makes it all the more accessible to readers like myself. I never found it distracted from her overall theme, that of a call to fellow "sticklers" to uphold the rules of grammar, either.
She tells stories. She does not just rant from her own perspective: she shares the knowledge that brackets were named "lunulae" by Erasmus in the 16th century for "their moon-like profile" (161). With stories of sarcastic letters written by George Bernard Shaw to T.E. Lawrence about the latter's use of grammar to the quoted thoughts of Lewis Thomas on the semicolon, you'd be hard-pressed to find a page without researched knowledge into the development of grammar in the English language.
She teaches the reader. As soon as I closed the book I noticed a change in how I spoke, verbally even, to my roommate. I literally have been watching every punctuation mark in this critique, remembering her examples on correctness and the importance of not looking like "a stupid person" (98). I feel I have improved.
With a final chapter on her lament at the emergence of "Netspeak," or the internet's effect upon grammar, Lynn Truss ends a book that is more than a guide; it makes a point. She truly wishes to bring the understanding of grammar to everyman, yes, but she also takes a blunt approach in reacting to poor punctuation. Lynn Truss entertains, yet she writes as someone truly convicted by a call to proper grammar; an academician with a purpose able to connect through clever writing and style.

My stress level has actually decreased since getting this book.

FINALLY, someone understands my, pain!


By the way, if you're running a little low on, commas and need a few thousand spares for emergencies, check out, the Wikipedia webpages. They have extra and unnecessary commas ALL OVER, the darn place. [I have included several samples here for your viewing and window-shopping pleasure!]