Now you have no excuse not to know!

who wants to rumble over oxford commas? you, you, or you?

This is great! I found out that I wasn’t alone in cringing at the sight of a poorly-punctuated sentence.

Lynn Truss has written a delightful best-seller on the art of using commas, apostrophes, and semi-colons in her Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. After reading this book all I can think of is that I need to use semi-colons more often. Eats, Shoots & Leaves is both a useful guide to punctuation (primarily from a British perspective) and a witty and humorous rant against the declining use of proper punctuation in our culture. Ms. Truss frequently delves into the historical roots of many of the punctuation and type formatting standards we take for granted today.



How could a book on punctuation make it to the best seller list and stay there for… how many months has it been? One reason is by being well written and entertaining. Another reason is that those of us who read books also often like to write. Since the dawn of email and the Internet we’ve been writing much more than we would ever have expected to. As such, many of us are on the one hand appalled by the lack of proper punctuation populating the emails of those born around the same time as the personal computer, and on the other hand trying to remember what exactly those rules were that we learned so long ago. Eats, Shoots & Leaves appeals to us for both reasons; Truss lambasts the awful punctuation she sees daily while gently explaining the guidelines for doing it right.

A very fun read. However, the first thing I did after finishing this book was apostrophize its in an e-mail to Daisy and Adam. Shameful! (completed 5/2)

Wonderful

Completed January 2005

A balm to my soul – even if I do have trouble with the occasional apostrophe…

Love this book!

This book makes me laugh out loud. Who knew punctuation could be so funny.

Rating: 4*/5

May not be the most instructive grammar book out there since it is mostly based on British grammer. Nonetheless it is more humorous than the others that I have read.

I heard a lot about this book before I read it, and it lived up to the hype. A fun and informative book.

Is there hope for me?

Love this.

Picked up in London. An amusing little book on proper punctuation (though the author is clearly unsound on the issue of the serial comma).

“A woman, without her, man is nothing.”

“A woman without her man, is nothing.”

Punctuation matters!

I already knew I was an apostrophe nut. Now I know I’m not alone. Ahhh.

How bad is my punctuation? Exhibit A: My blog.

A wonderful book for grammar lovers everywhere. I both cringed and laughed at mistakes in common usage — not that I ever make any myself.

Amusing, but a bit precious.