Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

by Lynne Truss

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Book cover for Eats, Shoots & Leaves

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The spirited and scholarly #1 New York Times bestseller combines boisterous history with grammar how-to’s to show how important punctuation is in our world—period.

In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss, gravely concerned about our current grammatical state, boldly defends proper punctuation. She proclaims, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. Using examples from literature, history, neighborhood signage, and her own imagination, Truss shows how meaning is shaped by commas and apostrophes, and the hilarious consequences of punctuation gone awry.

Featuring a foreword by Frank McCourt, and interspersed with a lively history of punctuation from the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes a powerful case for the preservation of proper punctuation.

  • ISBN10 1592402038
  • ISBN13 9781592402038
  • Publish Date 11 April 2006 (first published 12 April 2004)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher Penguin Publishing Group
  • Imprint Avery