Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Subtitle: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
By: Lynne Truss.
Edition: 4th printing
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2003
Place of publication: London, United Kingdom
Language: eng
Number of pages: 209
ISBN-13: 9781861976123
Copyright date: 2003
Subjects: English language -- Punctuation
Other titles: Eats, shoots, and leaves
Description: Everyone knows the basics of punctuation, surely? Aren't we all taught at school how to use full stops, commas and question marks? And yet we see ignorance and indifference everywhere. "Its Summer!" says a sign that cries out for an apostrophe, "ANTIQUE,S," says another, bizarrely. "Pansy's ready," we learn to our considerable interest ("Is she?"), as we browse among the bedding plants.

In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss dares to say that, with our system of punctuation patently endangered, it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them for the wonderful and necessary things they are. If there are only pendants left who care, then so be it. "Sticklers unite" is her rallying cry. "You have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion - and arguably you didn't have much of that to begin with."

This is the book for people who love punctuation and get upset about it. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to Sir Roger Casement "hanged on a comma"; from George Orwell shunning the semicolon to Peter Cook saying Nevile Shute's three dots made him feel "all funny", this book makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with.
--front flap
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 205-209).
UK edition
Table of contents: title: Introduction --; title: The seventh sense --; title: The tractable apostrophe --; title: That'll do, comma --; title: Airs and graces --; title: Cutting a dash --; title: A little used punctuation mark (Hyphen) --; title: Merely conventional signs --; title: Bibliography.