Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to PunctuationWe all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the internet, in email, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with. |
Contents
The Tractable Apostrophe | |
Thatll Do Comma | |
Airs and Graces | |
Cutting a Dash | |
A Little Used Punctuation Mark | |
Other editions - View all
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Lynne Truss No preview available - 2006 |
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Lynne Truss No preview available - 2004 |
Common terms and phrases
actually American apostrophe become beginning believe brackets British called century chapter clear colon comes comma correct course dash dead difference direct dots effect emails English evidently example exclamation mark explains fact feel full stop give grammar hand happened head hope hyphen idea ignorance imagine indicate interesting inverted commas it’s italics kind language leave less letters look Lord matter mean Meanwhile mind never newspaper notice once perhaps period person possessive printed published punctuation punctuation marks question mark quotation quote reader reason remember rule seems semicolon sense sentence simply sometimes sound spell stand stickler story style sure tell thing thought true turn usage words writing written wrong wrote