Eats, Shoots & Leaves; the zero tolerance approach to punctuation
Lynne Truss
ISBN: 0592400876
Finished Sept 9, 2014
Very funny, very very British. Loved the enormous section on commas. Would have actually enjoyed a bit more of the history of the punctuation marks - the little bits that were included were neat and much more chronologically and culturally varied than I had expected.
This edition (or perhaps even the original) even did a good job including the "American English" versions of names, but I was surprised that while she mentioned the "en dash" by proper name, she didn't go into the various (and peculiar) differences in usage between the en dash (the short one) and the em dash (the longer one, sometimes called a "horizontal bar"). Small quibbles compared to the fun of dealing with whether the punctuation should be inside or outside of the parentheses, er, brackets. :) (she's not really fond of emoticons either - I wonder what she thinks of emoji?)
Have to say I felt sorry for all the poor grocers who got totally pilloried in the course of the book, especially as concerns the use of the ' to indicate posession not plurality, as is the apparently widespread misconception.
Lighthearted self-deprecatory fussiness over correct behavior in the best way.
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