Eats Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss

Finally had the opportunity to read a book recommended to me by every single lover of grammar I’ve met in the last five years.  

The teachers at First Baptist, out of the kindness of their heart, gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card for Christmas.  They know me so well.  So, one Wednesday afternoon in late January, I got online and blew the whole thing in one fell literary shopping spree.  Though I have the picture of the audio book posted above I bought the real book and tore through it in three short evenings of reading.  What a joy!

Miss Truss rolls the reader through a sarcastic, humorous approach to basic English punctuation.  I probably ought to read it again sometime later this year as I spent most of the read appreciating her style rather than the importance of what she said.  

A great read!  I’d encourage you to borrow a copy from the library, curl up on the couch, sip some English tea out of respect for the originators of our fine language, and let your inner punctuation stickler revel in all the little rules.

Here are two quotes.  I didn’t underline anything in the book this time through, so you won’t see many more quotes for a while.  Perhaps I’ll remedy the situation the next time I work over it.  

“Everywhere one looks, there are signs of ignorance and indifference. What about that film Two Weeks Notice? Guaranteed to give sticklers a very nasty turn, that was – its posters slung along the sides of buses in letters four feet tall, with no apostrophe in sight. I remember, at the start of the Two Weeks Notice publicity campaign in the spring of 2003, emerging cheerfully from Victoria Station (was I whistling?) and stopping dead in my tracks with my fingers in my mouth. Where was the apostrophe? Surely there should be an apostrophe on that bus? If it were “one month’s notice” there would be an apostrophe (I reasoned); yes, and if it were “one week’s notice” there would be an apostrophe. Therefore “two weeks’ notice” requires an apostrophe! Buses that I should have caught (the 73; two 38s) sailed off up Buckingham Palace Road while I communed thus at length with my inner stickler, unable to move or, indeed, regain any sense of perspective.”

“Eats, Shoots & Leaves is not a book about grammar. I am not a grammarian. To me a subordinate clause will for ever be (since I heard the actor Martin Jarvis describe it thus) one of Santa’s little helpers. A degree in English language is not a prerequisite for caring about where a bracket is preferred to a dash, or a comma needs to be replaced by a semicolon. If I did not believe that everyone is capable of understanding where an apostrophe goes, I would not be writing this book. Even as a book about punctuation, it will not give all the answers. There are already umpteen excellent punctuation guides on the market; there is even a rather delightful publication for children called The Punctuation Repair Kit, which takes the line “Hey! It’s uncool to be stupid!” – which is a lie, of course, but you have to admire them for trying.”