Product Description

Eats, Shites and Leaves is a celebration of all things shite about the misuse of English, highlighting the prevalence of absent apostrophes, ghastly grammar, suspect sentences and rambling repetitiveness, commentators' claptrap, tortuous tautologies, insane instructions and quirky quotations in society today.

This essential collection touches upon ambiguous adverts - 'Why not have the kids shot for Easter, or have a family portrait taken?'; dangling modifiers - 'She slipped on the ice and apparently her legs went in separate directions in early December'; senseless statements - 'With half the race gone, there is half the race still to go'; and cloying cliches - 'If you find yourself in hot water, put your best foot forward'; and also includes lists of malapropisms, euphemisms, misspellings, rhyming slang and puns.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76991 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 160 pages

From the Publisher
" I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant' - Robert McCloskey, US State Department Spokesman

Featuring a plethora of examples that show how to get the worst out of the world's most commonly spoken language, Eats, Shites and Leaves is a wittily informative insight into how the English language can be used and abused in the twenty-first century.

Customer Reviews

It's OK
a few clever snippets, a few good quotes, I've read around so I see a lot of "been done before" stuff, for me the title is still the most memorable bit. I really like the title!

Brilliant
A really fun book. A light witty approach to the english language.

A classic in a class above the rest in its class
This book is obviously a parody of "Eats shoots and leaves" and it's very good. As the title suggests it's about the bad use of English, or is that the use of bad English? Either way, it lists a number of examples of tortured syntax and downright bad grammar, and it does it in a generally off-the cuff manner.

Examples of what not to do include repetition, repetition, switching sentences between being written in the active voice and when you write in the passive voice, and using prepositions to end sentences with. Did I mention repetition?

It also includes a number of examples of celebrity-speak and signs that simply boggle the mind - "Dog for sale - eats anything and likes children" being just one such example.

Well worth a read.