Lynne King's Reviews > Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

I found the title intriguing and also the author’s name. I also enjoyed the first words in the Introduction:

“Either this will ring bells for you, or it won’t. A printed banner has appeared on the concourse of a petrol station near to where I live. “Come inside,” it says, “for CD’s, VIDEO’s, DVD’s, and Book’s.”

Such incorrect usage of the apostrophe and it just makes me squirm. I have the same feeling about “its” and “it’s”. I vividly recall learning English grammar at school. It was exceedingly painful at the time, because the teacher was rather boring and this carried over to the class. Yawning was very common then too. I remember how correct usage of the apostrophe was always rammed down our throats. Now, with the internet, correct punctuation appears to be taking a back seat.

From the first page this was indeed a thought-provoking book. I loved the author’s punchy style but I was intrigued first of all to find out from where the title originated. A reference to this was made earlier on in the book:

“True, one occasionally hears a marvellous punctuation-fan joke about a panda who [my addition - shouldn’t this be ‘which’ because a panda is not a family pet?] ‘eats, shoots and leaves’….”

So on checking the acknowledgements I see that Nigel Hall was responsible for this. After a certain amount of research, I assume this is the joke? It’s rather good anyway.

“A panda walks into a restaurant, sits down and orders a sandwich. After he finishes eating the sandwich, the panda pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter, and then stands up to go.

“Hey!” shouts the manager. “Where are you going? You just shot my waiter and you didn't pay for your sandwich!”

The panda yells back at the manager, “Hey man, I am a PANDA! Look it up!”

The manager opens his dictionary and sees the following definition for panda: “A tree-dwelling marsupial of Asian origin, characterised by distinct black and white colouring. Eats shoots and leaves.”

Ms Truss starts with the unfortunate apostrophe. She just sees glaring errors everywhere: on buses, billboards, in newspapers, public institutions like the British Library, you name it, there are errors everywhere.

As an example, a headline in the paper states: “Dead sons photos may be released”. How many sons are there one wonders?

When Ms Truss was on Radio 4 making a series of programmes about punctuation, she met John Richards from the Apostrophe Protection Society. Imagine that. The apostrophe has become alive and finally reached “animal” status. The author questions:

“Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?”

It continues in this style, attacking all those who misuse commas, full stops (period US), semi-colons, etc. It's all an outrage to her and she throws in wonderful anecdotes to illustrate her point of view.

Under commas, I especially liked the Oxford comma. A typical example was “The flag is red, white, and blue.” The comma after white; in Britain, we normally leave it out but there are those who prefer to leave it in. I suppose this is somewhat pedantic?

Or,

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

It’s remarkable really how the comma can actually change the sense of a sentence so dramatically. I confess that I’ve never really thought of that before.

When we arrive at the semicolon, there’s a very good example with George Bernard Shaw. I agree with Ms Truss, we would obviously look on his use of this punctuation as sheer insanity but he’s dealing with T.E. Lawrence, who he refers to as “Luruns” (sounds like a place to me as we have “Laruns” not too far away from where I live in France). Mr Shaw believes that Lawrence is a liar:

“You will see [writes Shaw] that your colons before buts and the like are contra-indicated in my scheme, and leave you without anything in reserve for the dramatic occasions mentioned above. You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced in camp life.”

Ms. Truss laments on the arrival of the e-mail and the vocabulary that has come into being because of that. She blames the internet for all the books on line and wonders if the book will still be around in twenty years. She also makes references to the printed word:

“…The book remains static and fixed … Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proofread before it reaches us; we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and a pride of ownership, not to mention a feel of general virtue.”

Certain sections of the book just show a comma on the line. I rather liked that too; a fleuron of sorts? It’s probably best to pretend that it’s a variation of a flower or leaf.

I really could go on about this book but suffice it to say, I just thoroughly enjoyed Eats, Shoots and Leaves. It stands up for punctuation and correct punctuation at that. It’s all part of our heritage and must not get lost in time. It’s also very amusing.

All said and done, I recommend this book to everyone, regardless of their age. I'll no doubt go back to it from time to time just to re-enjoy it.