"You don't need to be a grammar nerd to enjoy this one...Who knew grammar could be so much fun?"
--Newsweek
Publisher Web Site, May, 2004
Summary
We 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.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Publisher's note
Preface
Introduction - the seventh sense
p. 1
The tractable apostrophe
p. 35
That'll do, comma
p. 68
Airs and graces
p. 103
Cutting a dash
p. 132
A little used punctuation mark
p. 168
Merely conventional signs
p. 177
Bibliography
p. 205
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.
