Product Description

'If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic I'd nominate her for sainthood.' Frank McCourt The international bestseller, reissued and with a new introduction. A witty, entertaining, impassioned guide to perfect punctuation, for everyone who cares about precise writing. When social histories come to be written of the first decade of the 21st century, people will note a turning point in 2003 when declining standards of punctuation were reversed. Linguists will record Lynne Truss as the saviour of the semi-colon and the avenging angel of the apostrophe. 'This book will stimulate and satisfy. It's worth its weight in gold.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'A witty, elegant and passionate book that should be on every writer's shelf.' Observer 'Lynne Truss deserves to be piled high with honours.' John Humphrys 'It can only be a matter of time before the new government seizes the chance to appoint her as minister for punctuation. The manifesto is already written.' Guardian 'She's a soul sister. She's one of us.' Richard Madeley

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1792 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback

About the Author
Lynne Truss is one of Britain's best-loved comic writers and is the author of the worldwide bestsellers Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Talk to the Hand. She reviews for the Sunday Times and writes regularly for radio.

Customer Reviews

Buy this book for the pedant in your life!
I highly recommend this book IF you have an interest in the english language, its punctuation, the development and abuse of said. This book is accessible, very funny, and well written. Lynne obviously cares about her subject and actually had a long-running national newspaper column on punctuation and its abuse.
If you are regularly infuriated by the greengrocer's apostrophe (carrot's, apple's, etc.) or wonder who invented the question mark (these things don't just turn up out of the blue, you know) then this is the book for you.
Buy it. Read it. Read it again. Bore everyone you know to tears with it. I did!

Simply a wonderful book for learning punctuation
A gem of a book. I would recommend this book for just about anyone who's wanting to improve their punctuation, as well as those who feel they need to refresh or even re-learn the art of punctuation.

It's a great and easy read and can even be used as a decent reference.

You can't help cheering it on, because it has done such a good job in its humble way
How does a book about how to use commas and colons properly have lodged itself at No 1 on bestseller lists? Maybe Lynne Truss' books success shows that it is not just a few reactionaries who care. Truss agrees it's selling off the internet and stickler-types probably don't do their shopping on the internet. Lynne Truss wonders if there might be readers whose higher education has given them at least a guilty conscience about what they have not been taught, suddenly thinking that perhaps it does matter and I wouldn't mind knowing this stuff. Those copies stacked in Waterstone's might show that there are plenty of people who want to be, as Lynne Truss puts it, 'virtuous'.

While Truss says that 'despair' gave this book its impetus, she does not sound despairing either in print or in person. The title itself is a joke, about an irate panda who walks into a cafe, orders a sandwich, eats it, draws a gun and fires two shots into the air. The waiter finds the explanation for this erratic behavior in a badly punctuated wildlife manual which the bear leaves behind: Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! tells you the rules, but is also full of jokes and anecdotes. It is a sort of celebration of punctuation. You can't help cheering it on, because it has done such a good job in its humble way. She speaks of the delights of the semi-colon with relish. She has listened to the man from the Apostrophe Protection Society (yes, it exists) but does not sound like a member of any such group. "I was so worried when I wrote the book that people would assume that anyone interested in this subject would be small-minded". --Lynne Truss.

I don't really know where punctuation is going. But this is a very good moment to look at it and see what state it's in. The internet and emails have come along very conveniently for people who didn't learn punctuation and can therefore get by. Punctuation helps give rhythm and a tone of voice to writing, and Truss thinks it no accident that readers of emails often find it difficult to pick up the tone of the person who's written it, with all those dashes. The grace notes get lopped off and it becomes very bald. So people start needing exclamation marks and capital letters, desperately trying to express a tone of voice.