Truss addresses the confusion of commas in legal jargon: “Legal English, with its highfalutin’ efforts to cover everything, nearly always ends up leaving itself semantically wide open” the problem with exclamation marks: “there is only one thing more mortifying that having an exclamation mark removed by an editor–an exclamation mark added in” and the effect of intentional comma splices: “done knowingly by an established writer, the comma splice is effective, poetic, dashing.” One funny example is how the phrase “extra marital sex,” when not hyphenated, communicates a very different meaning than what we would expect it to. Truss uses a number of fantastic examples that sheds light on all kinds of issues related to punctuation, including the Oxford comma, colons, and hyphens. Truss’s book is an enjoyable, quick read that provides useful insight into how the quirky English language works. Rather, the book elicits a conversation about how we might function (or not function) without punctuation and how we can use punctuation to our advantage to enhance not only clarity but style. While there are many rules about how to use specific punctuation marks (like semicolons and dashes), the book is not intended to be a strict resource book (that’s for the grammarians, Truss insists). Written almost as an inside joke to those self-appointed “grammar sticklers,” author Lynne Truss points to all her pet peeves about how people misuse punctuation, and how those misuses create ridiculous outcomes. She lives in Brighton, England.Eats, Shoots, & Leaves is a humorous (and sarcastic) book that explores how punctuation affects our day-to-day lives. She now reviews books for the Sunday Times of London and is a familiar voice on BBC Radio 4. Lynne Truss also hosted Cutting a Dash, a popular BBC Radio 4 series about punctuation. She won Columnist of the Year for her work for Women's Journal. The author of three novels and numerous radio comedy dramas, she spent six years as the television critic of The Times of London, followed by four (rather peculiar) years as a sports columnist for the same newspaper.

Lynne Truss is a writer and journalist who started out as a literary editor with a blue pencil and then got sidetracked.

Eats shoots & leaves