He ordered a sandwich, ate it, then pulled out a gun and shot the waiter. Not a primer but a 'zero tolerance' manual for direct action. Schools & English Language Center DiscountĪ witty, entertaining, impassioned guide to perfect punctuation, for everyone who cares about precise writing.No re-listening to just that segment on the comma.
The whole program is one hour and runs through the entire broadcast in one fell swoop. That seems like it would have been an easy thing to do. Also, there are no chapter breaks in this program. Most of the individual segments are maybe 10 minutes long. However, the show is by no means exhaustive in its treatment of punctuation. The history of punctuation and the uses of different marks was also interesting. Of course, there is talk of how punctuation is used properly and different mistakes made with punctuation and why. And that is the usefulness of this program it arouses interest in punctuation and alerts the listener to the need for punctuation. Lynne Truss uses such examples to show the usefulness of punctuation. "Let's eat grandpa!" means something entirely different than "Lets eat, grandpa!". It shows, for instance, how a misplaced coma can have deadly consequences. It's a very clever program that helps a person think about punctuation and its uses.
This is the radio broadcast that inspired the book. This isn't the book! I say that because it is obvious from the title of this program if one reads the whole thing, but it seems many didn't bother and then were disappointed with the product for being what it says it is. From George Orwell shunning the semicolon, to New Yorker editor Harold Ross' epic arguments with James Thurber over commas, 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. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. If there are only pedants left who care, then so be it. 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. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the internet, in email, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species. With more than 500,000 copies of her book in print in her native England, Lynne Truss is ready to rally the troops on this side of the pond with her rousing cry, "Sticklers unite!" The book became a runaway success in the UK, hitting number one on the best seller lists and prompting extraordinary headlines such as "Grammar Book Tops Bestseller List" (BBC News).
In 2002, Lynne Truss presented Cutting a Dash, a well-received BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation, which led to the writing of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
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