Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynn Truss

 Now, this is not my usual type of a book that I blog about. But, I loved it and anyone who obsesses about punctuation will find this book informative and entertaining. This is not a book about grammar but mostly about punctuation! The author writes in the preface that she did not think that the words "runaway" and "bestseller" would ever be associated with this book. But, they are. In the UK and the USA.

The cover illustrates beautifully what a difference a comma can make in the meaning of a sentence. You know how many books have a quote or a pithy statement on a page before the start of the book. This book has the following statement.

To the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St. Petersburg, who in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution.

I don't know how true it is that the demand for payments for punctuation marks precipitated the Russian revolution but it certainly sounds good to all the English grammar-sticklers. I am one. Not a good one though, and I keep The Little, Brown Handbook next to me while writing. I could blog about that grammar book in the future if I feel up to it. 

Anyway, back to the "Panda Book". This is not a grammar book and does not claim to be one. It is basically about the beef that Truss has with sloppy writers. There are chapters on apostrophes, commas, colons and semicolons and dashes. Truss includes sloppy punctuation examples, the most well-known may be the missing apostrophe in the title of the movie, "Two Weeks Notice." This is the sort of thing that grates on Truss's nerves like fingernails on a chalkboard. But then, commas are also often overused. Here, I am tempted to include a sentence that I loved from another book that I have blogged about, 
"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles. Referring to a run-on sentence, Towles writes, "Here, indeed was a formidable sentence---one that was on intimate terms with the comma, and that held the period in healthy disregard." I wish that I could have written this sentence.

 

Truss is funny with a dry wit, just as the British can be. If not anything else, you will have fun reading the book. You might even learn some grammar faux pas that you might be able to avoid in your future writings. (That was a plural faux pas, by the way. If I were to be speaking, I would have said, "fo paz".)