Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference!

This was fun. It's useful and informative while being funny at the same time. It's a wee bit out of date now, and I wonder what Truss makes of emojis but punctuation seems to have survived. A geek book that everyone can enjoy. Shame she wrote for the Mail though - maybe it was less toxic back then.

great reference for children (and adults)

I heard that this was such a witty, charming entertaining book, and it is not unusual for me to become deeply engaged in issues of grammar, usage, and mechanics, so it seemed like a great match for me. I've been meaning to read it for a long time. But...I already know and use daily the rules she laid out (except that you use an apostrophe when you pluralize words like "and" and "but," as words, which still seems really odd to me), so I wasn't interested in reading entire chapters embellishing on and being drily humorous about rules the Chicago Manual of Style dispenses with in a paragraph. I guess I have a more utilitarian view of learning about grammar and mechanics.

Much more important than that, I think, is that I see language more as an evolving system than as an immutable and not-to-be-questioned glory. Languages change, inevitably. They change because people misuse words or other features or start to press words or other features to new uses, and then those things become part of the language. It's like physical evolution--some mutations are helpful, and some seem completely random or even unhelpful but still get absorbed into the mainstream for reasons we can't quite see. That's the part I find fascinating, and it's also the part that helps me refrain from getting unhinged when someone writes "turnip's" instead of "turnips."

I think the author oversimplifies English grammar and mechanics rules, too. For example, people don't write "it's" instead of "its" because they are necessarily idiots who can't apply a simple rule. It's not a simple rule: You use an apostrophe to indicate possessives for single nouns (the boy's book, the cat's purr). It's true that you don't use an apostrophe for possessive pronouns (yours, hers), and "its" fits in that latter category, but people aren't completely coming out of left field there. They're applying the rule used for other nouns. People do things like that in every language. Some humans are more suited to written linguistic detail. Others approximate because they are more interested in or geared toward other things. I'm this way about my checkbook. Am I an idiot? (Perhaps.)


I do think that people who aren't inclined toward attention to linguistic details should recognize that and get their stuff proofread before publishing it, but that's a matter of societal process, organization, and expectations--it's bigger than one person's learning.

While the author tries to allow for the reality that some rules are more like guidelines, her overall attitude definitely allows for the sort of misguided, judgmental certainty that some people, for some reason, acquired in their fourth grade English language-arts classroom and never let go of. Somehow, a few particular rules become in people's minds inarguable signifiers of intellect and education--but those rules differ from person to person, which to me indicates an unreasonable tenaciousness in people's clinging to them. I'm not saying there shouldn't be correct and incorrect standard English grammar, mechanics, and usage, and I'm definitely not going to get into the dialect argument here. I am saying that, while one person thinks the quintessential sign of ignorance is misusing "whom," another person thinks the marker is the use of "they" instead of "his" or "her" or "his and her" (this rule, by the way, has pretty much gone by the wayside, due to natural linguistic evolution and the triumph of practicality over fussiness), and couldn't care less about "whom." Yet another person thinks "it's" is the most irritating thing in the world, but may not care in the least about "whom" or "they." And another hates when people end sentences with prepositions (which is a completely false "rule," the grammarian's version of an urban legend--I can't let it pass when people get all righteous about that one). The things that bug grammar-watchers the most are very subjective. This doesn't mean those rules shouldn't be followed--it just means one must retain a sense of perspective and humility about the whole thing. And it also means one must realize those rules change. The word "hopefully" didn't used to be a word--it was a sign of ignorance and shallowness to use it. Nowadays, how many people even know that?

Er, I guess the summary of my diatribe here is that I find the anthropological and linguistic reasons for people's errors a lot more fascinating than someone carping at length about others being incorrect.

A cartoon look at comma usage and how its misuse can make a sentence completely change and go awry. It's a funny companion, appropriate for children, to the author's similarly titled book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. We've enjoyed both books. Although our girls can't truly appreciate the nuances yet, they still enjoyed the cartoon pictures.

'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'
The title is a tasteful joke which prefaces the tone of the entire book, manual, guide on the art of punctuation. Truss strikes a great balance between history, utilitarianism and comedy, with the pressure of illustrating her own point on correct punctuation throughout the pages.

"For a millennium and a half, punctuation's purpose was to guide actors, chanters and readers-aloud [...]"

I have learnt a few English grammar peculiarities:
- However and Nevertheless must not be joined with a comma but rather a semi-colon or start a new sentence,
"Jim woke up in his own bed; however, he felt great."
- On commas: if the clause is "defining", you don't need to present it with a pair of commas. e.g.: The people in the queue who managed to get tickets were very satisfied. This infers not everyone could have a ticket,
- [sic] means sicut in Latin, "just as",


And the lyrical way in which the markers are given life. On semi-colons: "Like internal springs, they propel you forward"; "a pleasant feeling of expectancy".

However, I could not tell to what extent Lynn Truss' "zero tolerance approach to punctuation" is a humouristic device, given the last chapter on the abominal tyranny of the internet and its newspeak. Lynn Truss/Liz Truss?!

The illustrations make the concept more funny.

Great fun

This was a student request for a read aloud. They found it hilarious. This book was a fun way to talk about correct use of commas.