Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lynne Truss is a lady of eloquent humour, and filled with passion to defend the one thing she cares about most in her life - Punctuation. She brings those squiggly bits of ink do-dos to life and breathes meaning and personality into each of their uses. She also shares interesting and comical anecdotes such as Roger Casement being 'hung on a comma' and Anton Chekhov's parody of a Christmas carol 'The Exclamation Mark'. As someone whose first language is English, and has spent the past 18 years of her life using this language most lavishly and extensively, I am glad that I had learned quite a fair bit about the technicalities of punctuation, as well as some new words (Truss is not afraid to showcase her verbal prowess) such as sententious, catharsis, perspicuity, puritanical, logorrhoeic, idiosyncratic, desultory and palaver. Yes, I wrote them all down and imprinted them into my head. An enlightening read!

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