Book Review: Eats, Shoots & Leaves

by Linda Schaltz

Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Lynne Truss
Gotham Books, New York NY, 2003, 209pp, ISBN 1-592-40087-6, $17.50

For the few of you who may not be familiar with this book, I must start with the author’s explanation of the title.

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. “Why?” asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

“I’m a panda,” he says, at the door. “Look it up.” The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

“Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.”

This little story sets the delightful tone for the rest of the book. Is it the definitive guide to grammar and punctuation? No, probably not. However, I can honestly say that I have never sat down to read a book on this subject just for fun, until now. Ms. Truss makes this subject about as interesting as it can get. And really now, who can find fault with anyone who takes punctuation so seriously that she would stand outside of a movie theater with a giant apostrophe on a stick, just to properly punctuate the movie title “Two Weeks Notice”?

This book was on Britain’s Best Seller list for months. I find that incredible considering the topic. Apostrophes, dashes, commas, colons and semicolons are not the stuff of Pulitzer Prizes. Still, because this is an entertaining read, I found that I was learning (and re-learning) tools that are essential to my job. Who among us cannot stand to review the basics from time to time?

I must admit that I am personally quite fond of commas. Ms. Truss offers many interesting examples for us to think about, such as:

The people in the queue who managed to get tickets were very satisfied.

The people in the queue, who managed to get tickets, were very satisfied.

Call me a writing geek but this is the stuff I live for. Give me proper punctuation or give me –— well, at least give me a hard time! I highly recommend this to anyone who would like a refreshingly charming refresher in punctuation (and yes, that WAS supposed to be redundant), or to anyone who would just like an entertaining reference book. Two thumbs up!