![]() ![]() From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to Sir Roger Casement "hanged on a comma" from George Orwell shunning the semicolon to Peter Cook saying Nevile Shute's three dots made him feel "all funny", this book makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with. ![]() Lynne Truss, quote from Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker. This is the book for people who love punctuation and get upset about it. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. "You have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion - and arguably you didn't have much of that to begin with." Eats, Shoots & Leaves Published November 2003 Available at all good bookshops including: Amazon, Waterstones Anxious about the apostrophe Confused by the comma Stumped by the semicolon Join Lynne Truss on a hilarious tour through the rules of punctuation that is sure to sort the dashes from the hyphens. If there are only pendants left who care, then so be it. In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss dares to say that, with our system of punctuation patently endangered, it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them for the wonderful and necessary things they are. "Pansy's ready," we learn to our considerable interest ("Is she?"), as we browse among the bedding plants. "Its Summer!" says a sign that cries out for an apostrophe, "ANTIQUE,S," says another, bizarrely. Everyone knows the basics of punctuation, surely? Aren't we all taught at school how to use full stops, commas and question marks? And yet we see ignorance and indifference everywhere. ![]()
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