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: #73226 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-01
• Original language: English
• 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

For the English Lovers/Teachers Inside all of Us
"Eats, Shites and Leaves" is the parody of Lynne Truss' "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" and is a much kinder read for anyone interested enough to give it a go. I would suggest that it is mostly suited for those with a minor obsession with the English Language; whether they are students, teachers or just "Sticklers" who appreciate English fully and can still joke about it.
As an English Student, I found the book both interesting and entertaining, even though at first glance it appears to be a list of English "Do's and Don'ts"; which by the way quite a lot of it is. If you can plough through the lists and deliberate mistakes (I recommend small doses), you'll find that it is very cleverly written and leaves you feeling as if you've been entertained, rather than preached to about spelling, grammar and "good English" for 165 pages. The whole book is brilliantly illustrated with examples of "bad English", delighting in the oral blunders of all the people we love to see stuff-up their precisely constructed speeches, ranging from George W. Bush to Britney Spears.
If you are thinking about reading/purchasing this book and you haven't yet read "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" I strongly advise that you do so at some point before or after reading "Eats, Shites and Leaves". Although they aren't closely related as parodies go, they do neatly complement each other and are more interesting in combination.
Overall "Eats, Shites and Leaves" is a good read, managing to incorporate entertainment, interesting facts and actual education in an approachable and funny way. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for something different to read, especially with Christmas just around the corner.

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.

..or how not to jump on a bandwagon
This one of the very few books I have ever regretted buying.
Starting off with a statement that seems to suggest that the relevance of rules in a living language are of minor importance - a stance with which I heartily disagree, incidentally - the book then goes off into a badly structured exposition of rules interspersed with attempts at humour.
Eats, shoots, and leaves I read with enjoyment. It was both informative and entertaining, and had structure. This low-grade imitation I found myself skimming, trying to find something worth spending time reading. It was not a fruitful search.
Eats, Shoots, and Leaves was an unexpected and surprising but well deserved success. I suppose it was bound to spawn copy-cats. This book, in my view, fails as an imitation and as a parody.