Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation is a short non-fiction book written by Lynne Truss, the former host of the BBC's Cutting a Dash radio programme. Non-fiction is an account or representation of a subject which is composed of facts, true or untrue. ... Lynne Truss is a British writer and journalist. ... Jump to: navigation, search Corporate logo of the British Broadcasting Corporation The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is the national broadcaster of the United Kingdom. ...

In the book, published in 2003, Truss details the state of punctuation in the United Kingdom and the United States and describes how rules are being relaxed in today's society. Her goal is to remind her readers of the importance of punctuation in the English language by mixing humour and instruction. Jump to: navigation, search 2003(MMIII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Punctuation marks are written symbols that do not correspond to either phonemes (sounds) of a spoken language nor to lexemes (words and phrases) of a written language, but which serve to organize or clarify written language. ... For the song by the California punk band Pennywise, see Society (song). ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ...

There is one chapter each on apostrophes and on commas; one on semicolons and colons; one on exclamation, question, and quotation marks, italic type, dashes, brackets, and ellipses; and one on hyphens. Truss touches on varied aspects of the history of punctuation, including many thoroughly-researched anecdotes, adding another dimension to her explanation of grammatical rules. In the book's final chapter, she explains the importance of maintaining punctuation rules and touches on the effects of e-mail and the Internet on punctuation. Jump to: navigation, search An apostrophe An apostrophe ( ’ ) is a punctuation and sometimes diacritic mark in languages written in the Latin alphabet. ... Jump to: navigation, search A comma ( , ) is a punctuation mark. ... Jump to: navigation, search A semicolon ( ; ) is a kind of punctuation mark. ... Jump to: navigation, search A colon is a punctuation mark, with one dot above another, e. ... An exclamation mark (also exclamation point, and, rarely, mark of admiration) is a punctuation mark. ... A question mark An inverted question mark A question mark (or, less commonly, an interrogation point or eroteme) is a punctuation mark that replaces the period at the end of an interrogative sentence. ... Jump to: navigation, search Quotation marks, also called quotes or inverted commas, are punctuation marks used in pairs to set off speech, a quotation, or a phrase. ... Italic type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right and uses different glyph shapes, used to distinguish or otherwise set off certains words within text. ... A dash is a punctuation mark, and is not to be confused with the hyphen, which has quite different uses. ... Jump to: navigation, search See parenthesis for an account of the rhetorical concept from which the name of the punctuation mark is derived. ... Jump to: navigation, search Ellipsis Έλλειψις (plural: ellipses ελλείψεις, Greek for omission) in linguistics refers to any omitted part of speech that is understood; i. ... Jump to: navigation, search A hyphen ( -, or ‐ ) is a punctuation mark. ... An anecdote is a very brief tale narrating an interesting or amusing biographical incident. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...

The title of the book is derived from a joke on bad punctuation: Jump to: navigation, search A joke is a short story or short series of words spoken or communicated with the intent of being laughed at or found humorous by the listener or reader. ...

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.

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

"Well, 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."

(Oddly, this joke is referred to, but does not appear, in the book, to the confusion of some readers who are not familiar with the joke. It does appear, however, on the back cover.) Coffeehouse in Damascus A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café shares some of the characteristics of a bar, and some of the characteristics of a restaurant. ...

Irish author Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes, wrote the foreword to the U.S. edition of Eats, Shoots & Leaves. In it, he praises Truss for bringing life back into the art of punctuation, starting off by stating, "If Lynne Truss were Catholic I'd nominate her for sainthood." McCourt's tone is lighthearted, as is Truss's throughout the book. Frank McCourt (born August 19, 1930, New York City) is an Irish-American teacher and author. ... The word tone is used in several different fields with different meanings. ...

Much to the surprise of the publisher and author, when it was first published in 2003 in the United Kingdom, the book was a huge commercial success. Then, in 2004, the U.S. edition became a New York Times bestseller. Contrary to usual publishing convention, the U.S. edition of the book left the original British conventions intact. Jump to: navigation, search 2003(MMIII) is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Jump to: navigation, search 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The New York Times bestseller list is a weekly chart in The New York Times newspaper that keeps track of the best-selling books of the week. ... British English (BrE) is a term used to differentiate the form of the written English language in the United Kingdom from other forms of the English language. ...

Somewhat amusingly, in the early sections of the books, a punctuation error was located.

See also

A similar joke to the above is told in Australia. An Australian male is compared to a wombat, because he "eats roots and leaves" (roots in Australian colloquial usage, see the wiktionary on that). Genera and Species Vombatus É. Geoffroy, 1803 Vombatus ursinus (Shaw, 1800) Lasiorhinus Gray, 1863 Lasiorhinus latifrons (Owen, 1845) Lasiorhinus krefftii Owen, 1873 Wombats are Australian marsupials in appearance rather like a small, very short-legged and muscular bear approximately one meter in length, and with a mere nubbin of a tail. ...

Editions

• Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (London: Profile Books, 2003) ISBN 1-861-97612-7 (UK hardback)
• Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves (New York: Gotham Books, 2004), ISBN 1-592-40087-6 (US hardcover)

External links

• Official Website – The official website
• Criticism – A critical review of the book from the New Yorker magazine.