Review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

Review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. By Maeve Maddox Ive finally got round to reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. Heres a book that is not only useful and fun to read, its phenomenal popularity carries a moral for every writer: Dont worry about following the market. Dont try to produce another DaVinci Code or Harry Potter. Write what youre enthusiastic about and kindred spirits will find your book. Who could have guessed that a book about punctuation would hit the top of the charts? First published in April of 2004, Eats, Shoots and Leaves spent 25 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list and by October of that year had gone back to press 22 times to bring the total of copies in print to a million. I cant guess how many copies are out there by now. At a bit more than 200 pages including the bibliography, this little book describes the rules that govern the use of: apostrophe comma colon semi-colon dash hyphen period Plenty of other writing guides exist that describe the use of punctuation symbols, but the Truss book livens the discussion by throwing in history, examples of offensive punctuation, and the cheeky attitude that any English speaker smart enough to achieve an elementary school education ought to be smart enough to use apostrophes correctly. Heres a quotation that illustrates the clear, curmudgeonly style and underlying passion that has made this book a best seller with lovers of the language: To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as Thank God its Friday (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive its (no apostrophe) with the contractive its (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a simple Pavlovian kill response in the average stickler. The rule is: the word its (with apostrophe) stands for it is or it has. If the word does not stand for it is or it has then what you require is its. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, Good food at its best, you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave. As you can tell from the periods outside the quotation marks in this excerpt, Truss is British. Some of her funny allusions may go over the head of American readers, but most are understandable on both sides of the pond. And she always takes care to note differences between American usage and terminology, such as the fact that what Americans call a period is a full stop in England. Truss doesnt pretend to grammatical credentials beyond those of a professional journalist who paid attention to her elementary education. She is not a linguist or a grammarian. Indeed, New Yorker essayist Louis Menand scrutinized her text for punctuation inconsistencies and takes her to task in a piece called Lynne Truss’s strange grammar (June 28, 2004). He could do no less for the honor of his magazine, considering that Truss makes numerous references to the New Yorkers predilection for over-punctuation. If you havent read it yet, pick up a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Its funny and it really is a useful guide to English punctuation. Heres a link to Menands New Yorker article. You can also buy Eats, Shoots and Leaves on Amazon. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Book Reviews category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:Possessive of Proper Names Ending in S55 Boxing Idioms"To Tide You Over"