Friday, June 16, 2006

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves is Lynne Truss's attempt to correct the abysmal state of punctuation in the world today—and you don't have to be an English major to know what I'm talking about. The very day I read the chapter on "The Tractable Apostrophe" I saw a sign indicating a local tanning salon was "now accepting resume's."

Boring topic, you say? Okay, maybe for some. But you really don’t have to be a grammar geek to enjoy this book. It’s instructive and entertaining, making liberal use of that droll British humor we Americans find so charming yet can't for the life of us imitate. Here's a sample from the introduction:

Either this will ring bells for you, or it won't. A printed banner has appeared on the concourse of a petrol station near to where I live. "Come inside," it says, "for CD's, VIDEO's, DVD's, and BOOK's."

If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once. By all means congratulate yourself that you are not a pedant or even a stickler; that you are happily equipped to live in a world of plummeting punctuation standards; but just don't bother to go any further.

See? Now you want to go further, don't you? And you wouldn't be sorry—this book is fun, and chock full of hilarious specimens of incorrect punctuation usage. It even comes with a Punctuation Repair Kit to get wannabe vigilantes started—stickers (commas, semi-colons, even a few exclamation marks) for correcting punctuation faux pas everywhere. I'm on my way to Jungle Tan now, "The Panda Says NO!" sticker in hand.

3 Comments:

Blogger Melissa said...

What got me about this book was the joke on the back. Still cracks me up.

Her other one -- Talk to the Hand -- is just as fun.

6/17/2006  
Blogger Cheri said...

who's melissa?

Great review, Lisa. You captured the fun of the book with your own really great writing.

6/26/2006  
Blogger Lisa said...

Melissa is a friend of ours who happens to have a great book blog of her own. You can check it out here. Her blog was designed by the same gal who did ours (Julie). Visit Julie's blog here.

6/26/2006  

Post a Comment

<< Home