Book Review
Eats, Shoots & Leaves : the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
by Lynne Truss. Published by Gotham Books, 2004
Lynne Truss is a stickler. For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, it can also be defined as "Grammar Nazi." Think of Debbie Pope or Jack Wisemore and you're not far off. Yes, Truss believes her mission in life is to save the world from bad punctuation, to patrol the streets with a bottle of correction fluid, obliterating all unnecessary apostrophes from signs offering "CD's, Video's, and Book's" for sale. However, to avoid arrest for defacing private property, she has written a book instead.
That's right. A book about punctuation. BOOORRING! At least one would think so. But under the influence of Truss's biting sarcasm and wit, commas and apostrophes come alive in a way that brought her book, Eats, Shoots & Leaves : the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list in 2004, an unusual place for a grammar book. From the simple use of a question mark to the mind-boggling nuances of colons and semicolons, Truss humorously teaches readers how to construct sentences in a way that would evade even Debbie Pope's notorious correction pen.
But this book is not only about the correct way to place those dreaded semicolons. Truss also writes about the history of punctuation, of how western language originally had no punctuation until some ancient Roman chap decided that putting various marks at the end of sentences would make them easier to read. A few hundred years later a forward thinking Italian guy went a step further, deciding that a "tadpoley number-nine dot-with-a-tail" should indicate a pause in a sentence, thus giving us the comma.
For the more practical types who don't give a fig who invented the comma but would much rather know why they even ought to care about commas at all, Truss includes examples of how punctuation can completely change a sentence's meaning. One could punctuate Luke 23:43 two different ways: "Verily, I say unto thee, This day thou shalt be with me in Paradise," or, "Verily I say unto thee this day, Thou shalt be with me in Paradise." Either the thief on the cross went to heaven with Jesus that day or he arrived later, all dependent on a comma placement.
As helpful as this book is, do not take all of Truss's punctuation rules as gospel truth. She is from England, after all, where folks punctuate and spell differently than we do in America. When she rambles about full stops, she is talking about periods. When she mentions brackets, she is talking about parentheses. However, to clear up the muddle for her American readers, Truss discusses the differences between British and American punctuation in the preface.
So what good is a book on punctuation for non-English majors? After all, who outside the English department really cares where commas go? Truss sums up the answer by stating that punctuation is not "an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning." Whatever you write, from essays to business reports to lesson plans, you risk miscommunicating to your audience if you don't know where to place that comma. So if you've got to brush up on your punctuation skills, you might as well have a few laughs in the process, right?
--Christa Zilverberg, Cataloging Supervisor, Hurst Library