RSSEats, Shoots & Leaves
June 5th, 2006 | View Comments
Author: Lynne Truss
Publisher: Gotham
Rating: 
Buy Eats, Shoots & Leaves on Amazon.com
This book is not so much a guide to proper punctuation (though I did learn a thing or two), but a free-form rant on the sad state of punctuation in English today. Since I am an unapologetic (if imperfect) grammar Nazi, I loved it.
The first thing to note about this book is that it is small. The hardcover version is only five inches wide and 7.5 inches tall, with wide margins and wide spacing. Combine that with Truss’s colloquial style and you can get through the book’s 200-odd pages in no time.
Truss warms up by gnashing her teeth about the unfortunately named pop band Hear’Say and finishes with a diatribe about the Internet and what it is doing to the English language. Her despair at the misappropriation of punctuation symbols to make emoticons is palpable. :’(
Although Truss does attempt to present the basic rules governing the use of punctuation (though often winds up throwing up her hands and admitting that the intricacies may just be a matter of personal taste) and gives us some great examples of the perils of poor punctuation, what makes this book worth reading are the rambling tangents and personal anecdotes. The book is peppered with extremely funny illustrations of the author’s intense love affair with punctuation.
Take, for example, her picketing of the movie Two Weeks Notice [sic] with an apostrophe on a stick. Or her call to arms for grammar sticklers everywhere, suggesting we arm ourselves with correction fluid, markers, and stickers and begin crusading Fight Club-style for the cause of correct punctuation everywhere. Or her declaration that she wants to have the father of modern punctuation’s babies.
And who knew that punctuation has inspired so much angst and rebellion throughout the ages? Apparently Gertrude Stein was not only an influential feminist writer, but also a powerful voice in the punctuation anarchy movement, expressing distaste for commas and their punctuative brethren.
Reading this book is like sitting down with a good friend and a cup of tea and just letting loose about all the good and bad things that twist your knickers in the world of punctuation. But if you’re looking for a tightly-written tome about uses and abuses of our diminutive friends, you might want to read something else.
Buy Eats, Shoots & Leaves on Amazon.com
Yvonne posted this on June 5th, 2006 @ 8:23pm in Book Reviews | Permalink to "Eats, Shoots & Leaves"
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