Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (was the colon the right mark to use for a book title with a subheading?) by Lynne Truss is a book about punctuation and how often it is misused. The title comes from a joke about a panda who walks into a café, orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air, producing a poorly punctuated wildlife manual as explanation. It is meant to be humorous, but informative. (Wait, was that comma necessary?)

Has been compared to "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, but not about dead folks."

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Tropes used in Eats, Shoots & Leaves include:

• Britain: A publisher's note in the American version notes that attempts to Americanize the book would be both futile and misguided, and Truss makes note of the differences between American and British names for certain punctuation marks on occasion. Interestingly enough, the publisher's note in question uses the American spelling for "Americanize" (whereas the British would spell it "Americanise"), but then uses the British spelling for "humour".
  • They're both Oxford Spelling.
• Anton Chekhov: Referenced; apparently he did a short story on punctuation, a parody of A Christmas Carol. His more well-known The Cherry Orchard is also briefly mentioned.
• Demoted to Extra: Truss laments the fate of the semicolon, and to a lesser extent, the colon.
• Grammar Wank: The topic of the book.
• New Media Are Evil: Apparently, many people admit to their punctuation going out the window in emails, constantly using dashes and "those dot, dot, dot things" (ellipses--singular form ellipsis, which I point out because the plural of "ellipse" is spelled the exact same way). She also doesn't like smileys, because she thinks people will forget that punctuation marks can be used for anything else.
• Serious Business: Truss is pleased to hear that there is such a thing as an "Apostrophe Protection Society" but feels that they are not doing enough and suggests starting a militant wing.
• Take That: Directed at the writer Gertrude Stein in two separate chapters, and at a former pen-pal of the author's thrice in one chapter.