Wednesday February 23, 2005

Eats shoots and leaves

Finished reading this book by Lynn Truss last week. The story of the Panda and the suspect punctuation, which is being fixed by the bear on the front cover of the book is well known I am sure. The Panda is painting out a comma in the title (in red paint of course) that reads "Eats, Shoots & Leaves".

I liken the book to a rant sandwich. Unkind perhaps but if you read this book ignore the first and last chapters and read them later on. It is also not a useful reference book to punctuation, Lynn Truss indicates in her text and in the bibliography more suitable titles to use. However the book is well written and she tell us about the historical development of our punctuation and how it is heading. The examples are clear and well thought out. There are plenty of quotes from people and books which are amusing and interesting. The book's chapters deal with often used and abused common punctuation in order of popularity the comma, apostrophe, quotes then the ! , ? brackets etc.

The story on the back of the book is worth repeating:

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panada produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda" he says, at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So did I learn anything? Yes I did. But I think I have to do some work on my speeling [sic] first as those errors are usually more obvious. Any suggestions ?