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Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a short non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC's Cutting a Dash radio programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss details the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and describes how rules are being relaxed in today's society. Her goal is to remind her readers of the importance of punctuation in the English language by mixing humour and instruction.
About the book
There is one chapter each on apostrophes and on commas; one on semicolons and colons; one on exclamation, question, and quotation marks, italic type, dashes, brackets, and ellipses; and one on hyphens. Truss touches on varied aspects of the history of punctuation, including many thoroughly-researched anecdotes, adding another dimension to her explanation of grammatical rules. In the book's final chapter, she explains the importance of maintaining punctuation rules and touches on the effects of e-mail and the Internet on punctuation.
Irish author Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, wrote the foreword to the U.S. edition of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. In it, he praises Truss for bringing life back into the art of punctuation, starting off by stating, "If Lynne Truss were Catholic I'd nominate her for sainthood." McCourt's tone is lighthearted, as is Truss's throughout the book.
Much to the surprise of the publisher and author, when it was first published in 2003 in the United Kingdom, the book was a huge commercial success. Then, in 2004, the U.S. edition became a New York Times bestseller. Contrary to usual publishing convention, the U.S. edition of the book left the original British conventions intact.
Somewhat amusingly, in the early sections of the books, a punctuation error was said to be located.
A later paperback edition included a free "punctuation repair kit," with stickers for punctuation marks as well as "Panda Says No" stickers for the worst mistakes.
The title
The title of the book is an amphibology, a verbal fallacy arising from an ambiguous grammatical construction, and derived from a joke on bad "pun"ctuation:
- A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
- "Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
- "Well, I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."
- The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
Oddly, this joke is referred to, but does not appear in the book, to the confusion of some readers who are not familiar with the joke. A variant of the joke, however, appears on the back cover.
Trivia
- A similar joke is told in Australia, where an Australian male is compared to a wombat because he "eats, roots, and leaves".Eats, Shoots and Leaves, Australian Broadcasting Commission Radio National Lingua Franca program, 31 January 2004Mudcat Cafe Aussie Glossary (The verb "root#Verb" in Australian colloquial usage means to have sexual intercourse.)
- Another variation (also heard in Australia) involves a mental patient who escapes from an asylum to have sex with his girlfriend. Afterwards, he is in the shower when the police arrive, but he manages to escape by running down the street naked. On the TV news, the anchor announces the story as "Nut screws, washes and bolts" (an audible play on "nuts, screws, washers and bolts")
- When the writer was driven to an award ceremony she told the driver that she wrote a book on punctuation. The cab-driver said: "Well, you'd better not be late then."
Criticism
In a 2004 review of the book, Louis Menand of The New Yorker wrote, "An Englishwoman lecturing Americans on semicolons is a little like an American lecturing the French on sauces. Some of Truss’s departures from punctuation norms are just British laxness".Bad Comma: Lynne Truss’s strange grammar by Louis Menand, The New Yorker, 28 June 2004
Editions
- Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (London: Profile Books, 2003) ISBN 1-861-97612-7 (UK hardback)
- Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (New York: Gotham Books, 2004) ISBN 1-592-40087-6 (US hardcover)
See also
References
External links
"Eats, Shoots & Leaves"