Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14291 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Books in Canada
“Dancing with abandon, turning a tango into a fertility rite.”
Marshall Pugh, The Chancer


Apostrophe, comma, colon, semicolon, question, quotation and exclamation marks, italics, dashes, brackets, ellipsis, hyphens and solidus are all tackled with gusto by Lynne Truss in this showpiece of a book. And in order to sex-up a subject, which at its most basic level is about different kinds of interruption, Truss quotes from Thomas McCormack’s book The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist (1989), arguing that punctuation should “tango the reader into the pauses, inflections, continuities and connections that the spoken line would convey.” This comparison with Latin dance would like to be very suggestive. It is as if Truss wants to promote punctuation as having deep tribal rhythms and ecstasies, when, in actuality, putting marks upon a page is really about being “a stickler” and about the preservation of “standards”.
To be punctilious about punctuation might be redescribed, by a Freudian, as a form of sublimation. Truss confesses, “while other girls were out with boyfriends on Sunday afternoons, getting their necks disfigured by love bites, I was at home with the wireless listening to an Ian Messiter quiz called Many a Slip, in which erudite and amusing contestants spotted grammatical errors in pieces of prose. It was a fantastic programme.” If to be fascinated with punctuation is about not being sexual, then punctuation is, in itself, an insistent signal that sabotages the sensual. James Joyce knew this. And so Molly Bloom’s final monologue in Ulysses has no punctuation marks at all.
If punctuation must be compared to dance, it is certainly not doing the tango. But it might be likened to the starched and mannequin-like performances of the strictest ballroom. The feigned mannerisms of ballroom dancing seem, to me, to be closer to Truss’s favourite definition for the function of punctuation-“a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.” For her, the analogy with good manners is “perfect,” and she goes on to argue, with an after dinner etiquette, that punctuation marks are like “truly good manners”; they are “invisible”; “they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves.” And her comparison of questions or quote marks with good manners, for example, gives some indication that the ideal reader of this book would prefer Jane Austen and the delicate ceremony of afternoon tea to the seduction of Latin rhythms.
Truss’s exorbitant expressions of discontent about poor punctuation-‘it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement’; ‘part of one’s despair’; ‘It hurts, though. It hurts like hell’-not only disclose that she is a terrible idealist in search of a punctuation Utopia, but that her punctuation fetish seems to be a covert way of talking about what it means to be English and of discussing England’s history, politics and its relationship with the United States. For Truss’s examples of punctuation use and maltreatment suggest that beneath her story about “the tractable apostrophe” or the classical colon, for instance, rage those old debates that are partly about national identity-which interrupt her tale as interesting as they are.
Reflecting on England’s religious history, Truss argues that “huge doctrinal differences” hung on the placing of a comma. For example, “Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise” could also be “Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” The first is the Protestant version of Luke, xxiii, which “lightly skips over the whole unpleasant notion of Purgatory and takes the crucified thief straight to heaven with Our Lord,” whereas the second, “promises Paradise at some later date (to be confirmed, as it were) and leaves Purgatory nicely in the picture for the Catholics.” Britain’s union with Ireland is touched upon in the case of the Irish rebel, Sir Roger Casement, who was also “hung on a comma.” Charged under the Treason Act of 1351, Casement’s defence argued that the law was unpunctuated and therefore open to interpretation. But the magistrates, after consulting the original statute, discovered a “helpful virgule”, confirming their interpretation of the law and his guilt. A similar example is made with New Labour’s infamous dossier on Iraq which reproduced the punctuation errors from a thesis by an American doctoral student. Another case, filed by Truss, demonstrates the importance of healthy punctuating and how, if we ignore rules, we do so at “our political peril as well as to our moral detriment.” Yet, the rules of punctuation-such as whether a full stop should come in or outside quotation marks-do not just show how Britain and America are separated by their comma practice. The different usages define their divergent histories. And there are so many examples of Americans misusing punctuation in this book that we might suspect Truss of blaming the United States for things becoming so “outrageously slipshod.”
Eats, Shoots and Leaves is in many ways a lament, an elegy for a lost world without proper punctuation, for the loss of “the Queen’s English” and the fact that the bulk of its shares are now the property of the U.S. And Truss’s sense of loss is about the decay of the values she cherishes. She remembers how, as a teenager, she blasted an American pen-pal “out of the water” because of the punctuation and spelling errors in her letter; she cites, with indignation, the misreading of a line from Macbeth, in a production in New England, where, all because of a misplaced comma the actor proclaimed “Go get him, surgeons” instead of “Go, get him surgeons.” The American writer, Gertrude Stein, does not escape whipping. She is described as the “energetic enemy to all punctuation” and denounced for her description of the comma as “servile”, the semicolon as “pretentious”, for being “uninterested” in the question mark and for condemning the dash and italics.
Although there is fun to be had teasing out the furtive repressions, politics and punctuation policies of Eats, Shoots and Leaves-even if it is a little at Truss’s expense-her entertaining and instructive account on the uses and abuses of punctuation is not, at heart, anti-American. It is, rather, a “rallying cry” that goes in fear of the abandonment of standards, a “small islander’s” account of the invasion of Coca-colon and “emoticon” cultures. She may be overly pessimistic about the effects of text messaging, email and the internet, yet surely they have helped punctuation speciate by giving, for example, the military-like full stop, which calls a sentence to a halt, a rather transgressive, camp side, online, called dot. We might even want to temper Truss’s claim that “proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.” And if where we place punctuation, and the marks we prefer is partly a matter of taste, as has been argued in Eats, Shoots and Leaves, we might want to think of more versatile and illuminating terms with which to describe our practice. Perhaps, in this way, we could imagine flirtatious, democratic or superior punctuation, rather than having a “zero tolerance approach” with its tyrannical implication of correct and incorrect usage.
Michael Kinsella (Books in Canada)

From Publishers Weekly
Who would have thought a book about punctuation could cause such a sensation? Certainly not its modest if indignant author, who began her surprise hit motivated by "horror" and "despair" at the current state of British usage: ungrammatical signs ("BOB,S PETS"), headlines ("DEAD SONS PHOTOS MAY BE RELEASED") and band names ("Hear'Say") drove journalist and novelist Truss absolutely batty. But this spirited and wittily instructional little volume, which was a U.K. #1 bestseller, is not a grammar book, Truss insists; like a self-help volume, it "gives you permission to love punctuation." Her approach falls between the descriptive and prescriptive schools of grammar study, but is closer, perhaps, to the latter. (A self-professed "stickler," Truss recommends that anyone putting an apostrophe in a possessive "its"-as in "the dog chewed it's bone"-should be struck by lightning and chopped to bits.) Employing a chatty tone that ranges from pleasant rant to gentle lecture to bemused dismay, Truss dissects common errors that grammar mavens have long deplored (often, as she readily points out, in isolation) and makes elegant arguments for increased attention to punctuation correctness: "without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning." Interspersing her lessons with bits of history (the apostrophe dates from the 16th century; the first semicolon appeared in 1494) and plenty of wit, Truss serves up delightful, unabashedly strict and sometimes snobby little book, with cheery Britishisms ("Lawks-a-mussy!") dotting pages that express a more international righteous indignation.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Oh, to be in England. Or rather, oh, to have quotidian access to BBC4 radio productions such as "Cutting a Dash," the hit series about punctuation that inspired the hit book EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES. Thank goodness all six episodes are available as a classy audio production. Swinging jazz riffs introduce each segment; background noises color scenes set on city streets and in children's classrooms; and through it all, the crisp, humor-filled voice of comedy writer/literary editor Lynne Truss gives us permission to laugh aloud while being shocked, yes shocked, about the disastrous state of punctuation and grammar in the modern world. Notice my use of the semicolon, a punctuation mark that Truss has caused me to reconsider. I have learned that Greek dramatists gave the world the comma, colon, and period; that the second comma in that string is known as an Oxford comma; and that it incites much debate. I have also learned that society's overuse of the apostrophe may indicate its imminent demise. So, I plan to join Sticklers United to fight punctuation-imprecision and to play my copy of EATS, SHOOTS & LEAVES until it wears out. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

Misleading and not funny
For Americans, _Eats, Shoots and Leaves_ has a serious, fundamental flaw: it models the English style of punctuation, which differs in a number of ways from the American style as exemplified in the Chicago Manual of Style. Those who follow Ms. Truss's teaching will, perhaps unknowingly, violate American rules of grammar, punctuation, and style. In addition, the book is not systematically arranged or complete, so it cannot reliably be used as a reference. Many of the set-in examples are purposely wrong, so that, by contrast with CMS, a reader cannot look to the examples for guidance. In my opinion, the author's attempted humor falls short, too. Karen Elizabeth Gordon's _The New Well-Tempered Sentence: A Punctuation Handbook for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed_ is funnier, better organized, and more complete. CMS is, for the most part, the definitive reference.

Lynne Truss Has Got A Little List
As someday it may happen that a victim must be found,
She's got a little list -- she's got a little list
Of illiterate offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed -- who never would be missed!
There's the greengrocer's redundant and reviled apostrophe
Granting unapproved possession of the carrot and the pea --
All the dangling expectations when the commas aren't in pairs --
All the chaos that's created in semantical affairs --
All editors eliminating semis from your list --
They'd none of 'em be missed -- they'd none of 'em be missed!

She's got 'em on the list -- she's got 'em on the list;
And they'll none of 'em be missed -- they'll none of 'em be missed.

There's the muzzy-headed journalist whose phrases roam like sheep,
Who thinks that commas don't exist -- she's got him on her list!
And the pedants whose subordinated clauses bring on sleep,
They never would be missed -- they never would be missed!
There's the manuscript that always gives infuriating pause
By the wrongful punctuation of the inoffensive clause,
And ambiguous intentions when a colon should be placed
But the author for some reason holds that mark in great distaste,
And the cavalier exclaimer who from screaming can't desist --
I don't think he'd be missed -- I'm sure he'd not be missed!

She's got him on the list -- she's got him on the list;
And I don't think he'd be missed -- I'm sure he'll not be missed!

And the sentences that ought to end but will not mind the stop
So the readers lose the gist -- she's got 'em on the list!
And the badly punctuated placard shilling for a shop,
They'd none of 'em be missed -- they'd none of 'em be missed.
And the foes of readability with dashes everywhere,
They inch along in fits and starts, they make you want to swear,
The intolerant authorities whose standards are not yours,
Those moral weaklings oozing indecision from their pores,

It's a stickler's job to see they all are placed upon the list,
For they'd none of 'em be missed -- they'd none of 'em be missed!

In homage to THE MIKADO; libretto by W.S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan.

Linda Bulger, 2008

PUNCTUATION: THE ENDANGERED SYSTEM
A great piece of humour here and, yet, with a serious aim, this little book has become a runaway bestseller overnight and rightly, too.

As author Lynne Truss has explained, there are many people who have little idea of the basics of punctuation. This does not surprise me in the slightest. As an examiner and a forced PGCE learner, I have found scant regard paid to full stops, commas and question marks- and it is getting worse!

However, by far the number one serial offender is the missing apostrophe. The story of the Panda who eats in a restaurant, then shoots the restaurant up and departs is an amusing story with an important message. The placing of punctuation in the wrong place can completely alter the message being conveyed... and at what a cost.

A REVOLUTION IN PUNCTUATION

The book is dedicated to the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers in St Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution.

We have come a long way in nearly 100 years and the main casualty has been the written word. The `shorthand' I have encountered in the last six years using the Internet is enough to convince me that this book should be compulsory reading in schools. Besides, it is a good read and very funny in places. To sell 50,000 copies in just over a week on release is a great achievement and illustrates the interest proper ways of communication continue to generate and I thank Lynne for that.

LEARNED OPINIONS

It's true to say that the book makes a powerful case for the preservation of the system of what is interestingly described as `printing conventions'. However, this is not a book for pedants but for everyone, including members of the Bar who write lengthy Opinions (like me). It has never surprised me how cross the Judiciary become when they see sloppy legal paperwork. I expect it from solicitors but we must maintain a very high standard at the Bar, even with the infernal Internet and toxic text messages.

Well done, Ms Truss for reminding us of our legal roots... `sticklers unite' she says, `you have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion - and arguably you didn't have much of that to begin with'.

Do look at the end of the book for a fine bibliography - all the usual suspects are there including one B Bryson and `Troublesome Words', and the excellent Philip Howard's `The State of the Language: English observed.' Lynne Truss has protected our endangered punctuation with panache and rightly raised the communication stakes at the right time.

ISBN: 978-1-59240-2038