Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Well - I probably enjoyed this short book more than I should have. While my punctuation is not perfect and my reviews always contain typo's that I only spot years later, I still enjoy a good laugh at terrible punctuation.

Lynne Truss has collected some great punctuation faux pas. But more than that, she has provided relatively simple guidance on how to correctly position those commas, apostrophes, hyphens, and the like. (Points for noticing the Oxford comma (used after the and in a list) which I quite like.) I also like the guidance on how to position the full-stop when dealing with quotation marks or brackets (which I know I tend to over-utilise). Of course, I am paranoid now about every comma, hyphen and apostrophe in this review, as it would have been better just to throw some stars at it and not write a review at all than to cock up the punctuation...

Some quotes:
To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as “Thank God its Friday” (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence.-If you still persist in writing, “Good food at it's best”, you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.-Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?-I apologise if you all know this, but the point is many, many people do not. Why else would they open a large play area for children, hang up a sign saying “Giant Kid's Playground”, and then wonder why everyone stays away from it? (Answer: everyone is scared of the Giant Kid.)-Phrases abound that cry out for hyphens. Those much-invoked examples of the little used car, the superfluous hair remover, the pickled herring merchant, the slow moving traffic and the two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would all be lost without it.

5 stars for its reference value if nothing else!