Eats, Shoots & Leaves
 |
|
| Author | Lynne Truss |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | English grammar |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Profile Books |
|
Publication date
|
6 November 2003 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 228 pp. |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 55019487 |
| 428.2 22 | |
| LC Class | PE1450 .T75 2003 |
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme. In the book, published in 2003, Truss bemoans 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 readers of the importance of punctuation in the English language by mixing humour and instruction.
Truss dedicates the book "to the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of 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"; she added this dedication as an after finding the factoid in a speech from a librarian.
There is one chapter each on apostrophes and on commas, one on semicolons and colons, one on exclamation marks, question marks, and quotation marks, italic type, dashes, brackets, ellipses, emoticons and one on hyphens. Truss touches on varied aspects of the history of punctuation and includes many anecdotes, which add another dimension to her explanations of grammar. In the book's final chapter, she opines on the importance of maintaining punctuation rules and addresses the damaging effects of email and the Internet on punctuation.
...
Wikipedia