Eats, Shoots & Leaves
Subtitle: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
By: by Lynne Truss ; illustrated by Pat Byrnes.
Contributors: Byrnes, Pat, ill.
Edition: Illustrated ed.
Publisher: Gotham Books
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9781592403912
Copyright date: 2003
Subjects: English language -- Punctuation -- Juvenile literature; Comma -- Juvenile literature
Genres: Juvenile literature
Other titles: Eats, shoots and leaves
Description: We all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the internet, in email, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with.
Notes: "Originally published in Great Britain in 2003 by Profile Books, Ltd."--T.p. verso.

With a foreword by Frank McCourt (2004).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 172-173).
Table of contents: title: Introduction: 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; title: Merely conventional signs.