Rating: 
Summary: Its a grate reed
Review: {This is trooly a grate book."I wish eye had it yeers ago." He said. I think I shood have finished... reeding it befour writing this gloweeng revyou/ I now have the confidense I need to be a righter miself?{
Rating: 
Summary: It's not clever and it's not funny
Review: It is a good thing that a book on punctuation is a best-seller; it's just a pity it's this one. All the good work Lynne Truss does in conveying her message (viz., punctuation matters) is undone by her hectoring tone, dismal attempts at humour (made worse by a tendency to point out the punch-lines) and, in the final analysis, lack of credibility: having set out rules she then reverses over them, makes egregious appeals to authority and, every now and then, just gets things flat out wrong. You might forgive that were there any humility in her prose, but there isn't. The first rule of hubris is: if you're going to be a clever-clogs, make sure you're right, because readers won't cut you any slack if you're not. Lynne Truss isn't always right. A case in point: in her introduction, Truss states (rather presumptuously) on behalf of her fellow sticklers, "we got very worked up after 9/11 not because of Osama bin-Laden but because people on the radio kept saying "enormity" when they meant "magnitude", and we hate that". Now ignoring the curious impression this creates of Truss's value scheme, she is quite wrong to take umbrage here: "Enormity", in British English, means "extreme wickedness". The magnitude and the awfulness of an act of mass murder are closely correlated. So, even in British English, it is perfectly right to talk of the "enormity" of September 11. But if any of the voices Truss heard on the radio were American, they had another excuse. In American English enormity *does* mean "magnitude". Since Truss is so enamoured with appeals to authority, it is odd she didn't check that with the best authority on American English, Webster's dictionary. I should mention that I read English edition of this book. Given Truss's proclivities as regards the cultural heathen, it will be interesting to see whether her American sub-editors pluck up enough courage to point this out. When she does make them, Truss's appeals to authority are even more irritating, particularly where they contradict her own rules or justify her own errors: So, the author patiently explains that an apostrophe is required to indicate possession except in the case of a possessive pronoun (i.e., "mine", "yours", "his", "hers", "its", "ours" and "theirs"). Now, I had always wondered why a possessive "its" doesn't have an apostrophe, and this explains it nicely. But then Truss completely undermines her own rule and appeals to the authority of Virginia Woolf: "Someone wrote to say that my use of "one's" was wrong ("a common error"), and that it should be "ones". This is such rubbish that I refuse to argue about it. Go and tell Virginia Woolf it should be "A Room of Ones Own" and see how far you get." Virginia Woolf's been dead for over fifty years, so this is pretty tough to do. But it doesn't mean Virginia Woolf was right. And Truss fails explain why this is "such rubbish". Finally, even the book's title betrays the author's questionable sense of humour. I don't think she gets the joke. It has nothing to do with waiters or pistols (perhaps a maiden aunt told her that one?) and certainly doesn't need a "badly punctuated wildlife manual" to work, because it isn't a grammatical play; it's an oral one. The joke doesn't work when you write it down, precisely because of the ambiguous comma. You have to say it out loud (in spoken English, there is no punctuation at all). I hope they re-title the New Zealand edition of this book, because the local version of the joke (which employs a delightful expression from NZ English) is funnier: The Kiwi, it is said, is the most anti-social bird in the bush, and no-one likes to invite it to parties, because, if it turns up at all, it just eats roots and leaves. The joke's about shagging, Lynne.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Indeed, who would have thought this book would take over the number one ranking at Amazon.com. Must be far more writers and authors out there than we think. Great news! Eric Bollinger
Publisher
McKenna Publishing Group
Publisher of "Two Dozen Lessons From An Editor" by Jim Woods.
Rating: 
Summary: What about the Ampersand?
Review: Based upon the publicity, I thought we'd get a pot pourri of examples of poor grammar in published material, but in fact there were few examples of this. As it says on the flyleaf, this is indeed a book for people who love punctuation and get upset about it. However, it can seem over-long in places. 33 pages on the Apostrophe was interesting, but 35 pages on the comma was exhausting & exhaustive. The colon, semicolon, dash, brackets, ellipsis, italics, exclamation mark, question mark, hyphen & emoticons all feature to good effect - but the ampersand was nowhere to be seen? 4* for the idea, and 3* for the result. If you want to more readily know what to do when, I recommend the Style Guide from the Economist.
Rating:
Summary: Great Help For Challenged Writers Like Me!
Review: I got this book this morning and am on my second reading already! I have always loved to write and have even had some success with publishing and selling my books. My grammar is challenged and punctuation frustrates me. As a result, I find myself constantly writing and rewriting my columns and manuscripts. This book gives clear and easy to understand rules for using the English language correctly. All of the writing courses I took in college and since usually left me more confused and frustrated about the laws of grammar and punctuation. Not only is this book very funny, it is highly useful. I am planning to rewrite my first book, "The Child Whisperer", and thanks to "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" I hope to wow my editor with a more complete understanding of writing mechanics.
Rating:
Summary: Incredible: An Entertaining Punctuation Manifesto
Review: "If there is one lesson that is to be learned from this book, it is that there is never a dull moment in the world of punctuation." Perhaps that is hyperbole, but there is never a dull moment in _Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation_ (Gotham Books) by Lynne Truss. Surely the book will not be the sensation it was in Britain, but it is witty, informative, and entertaining; you can't ask for more from a punctuation manual. And if you do not yet think that punctuation is important, you will after you see all the misunderstandings a little comma can cause. Take the peculiar title, which is from a joke: A panda goes into a café, orders a sandwich, eats it, takes out a revolver, fires it into the air, and goes out. When the waiter calls to ask what is going on, the panda plunks a badly punctuated wildlife manual onto the table and growls: "Look me up." The waiter finds the entry: "PANDA. Large, black-and-white, bear-like mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves." Oh, let's have one more. There was an American actor playing Duncan in _Macbeth_, listening with concern to the battle story of a wounded soldier, who cheerfully called out: "Go get him, surgeons!" Misplaced comma; it should of course be: "Go, get him surgeons!" Another story related here, a true one, shows that a comma can literally be a life-or-death matter. The book is zero tolerance indeed. Truss says it doesn't matter if you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice, "If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve ..." and she lists some ghastly punishments. Such militantism surely qualifies her for the Apostrophe Protection Society, a real organization that (along with Truss) is horrified by commercial signs that announce "Antique's" or "Apple's". The recent film _Two Weeks Notice_ gives her recurrent fits. She wants to know if they would have called it _One Weeks Notice_. She suggests that we enlist in the apostrophe war, arming ourselves with correction fluid, stickers to cover superfluous apostrophes, and markers with which to insert omitted ones. But best of all, she gives, simply and generously, the rules that will guide one in any apostrophic situation. Plus there is history. In Shakespeare's time, the apostrophe only indicated omitted letters, as it still does in "doesn't." Then in the 17th century printers put it in front of singular possessive "s," and in the 18th they put it after the plural possessive "s," and here we are. You can turn to this little volume for guidance on the dash, hyphen, colon, semicolon, and more. The rules are here. American readers should note that theirs is a reprint of the British edition, without changes to spelling or punctuation. Often Truss mentions the differences, but she would vehemently deny that this shows that punctuation rules are arbitrary. Punctuation "... is a system of printers' marks that has aided the clarity of the written word for the past half-millennium." The conventions evolved slowly, in conversation between printers and readers. Truss worries that printing will decline in our e-age. A printed book has been edited and fussed over, but e-mail often does not even bother with capital letters. Truss thinks that since punctuation represents an effort of a considerate writer to guide a reader into a correct interpretation, the lack of e-punctuation has lead to clumsy explanations, like "Just kidding!" or even "JK!" having to be added to get a tone across, or the (to her) grievous incorporation of her beloved punctuation into emoticons or smileys. "Punctuation as we know it... is in for a rocky time," she says. But her book is a call to sticklers like herself: "I am all the more convinced we should fight like tigers to preserve our punctuation, and we should start now." This delightful style manual has been turned into a manifesto by an author in love with her subject.
Rating:
Summary: Great Resource and Funny Too!
Review: This funny book is a great resource for writers like me trying to break into the author biz. My writing professor gave me this book as a graduation gift along with Mahesh Grossman's "Write a Book Without Lifting a Finger." While "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves:" gives advice on how not to write poorly, Grossman's book gives great advice on how not to write at all, or more appropriately, how to write like a celebrity. After reading "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves:" I was amazed at how some journalists could have such poor grammar and some celebrities had a beautiful writing style with perfect grammar. The answer is found in "Write a Book Without Lifting a Finger" - most celebrities use a "ghost writer." It may sound odd, but I suggest you too read both books to get a new and funny insight into the world of the written word.
Rating:
Summary: It's not about the panda . . . well, okay, maybe a little
Review: Tis a rare thing for someone to be able to educated us AND make us laugh at the same time--my favorite type of education, by the way. Hence my glee at finding this stellar little book that does just exactly that. When I first saw this book advertised, I thought, "Groan. Here's another academic and boring book on punctuation or the lack thereof." I ran screaming from the room each time an advertisement popped up or someone recommended the thing. And what's this title about? Some guy that eats something, shoots a basketball, and leaves? I was totally in the dark. Then I took the time to read the description---this after seeing the incredible ranking that the good people of Amazon have bestowed upon this literary creation---and my eyes were opened. This is one funny book! Not at all what I expected. And in the process, you actually learn something. Hopefully this will help those of us out there who are punctuation deficient, and be funny to those who aren't. Would also recommend to really great reads (and from what I could tell, both of these were punctuation savvy and up to snuff)---one is a book titled "The Birth of Venus" and the other is one called "The Bark of the Dogwood." Both seem to have all their "i's" crossed and "t's" dotted . . . or, whatever . . . Listen, I'm still working on it. Okay?
Rating:
Summary: Hope for those of us who punctuate properly!!
Review: For a long time, I hid my sickness. I only talked about it to close friends, people who wouldn't judge me. I thought I was the only person who cringed each time I saw "your" when it should have been "you're" or wanted to rewrite entire Amazon.com reviews because of atrocious spelling and/or punctuation. Now I know that I'm not alone; in fact, I'm in good company. This book does the unthinkable. It takes both a humorous and an educational look at the often overlooked (and undertaught) world of punctuation. I actually found myself laughing out loud at parts of this book. That could be because I'm an English teacher, but I like to think it's because Lynne Truss is a funny lady and this is one funny book. The next time I'm about to pull my hair out while teaching apostrophes to eighth-graders, I'll pull out this book and have a good laugh. Lord knows I'll need it.
Rating:
Summary: The, well/placed; humble . . . comma
Review: When I first saw this book advertised, I thought, "Groan. Here's another academic and boring book on punctuation or the lack thereof." I ran screaming from the room each time an advertisement popped up or someone recommended the thing. And what's this title about? Some guy that eats something, shoots a basketball, and leaves? I was totally in the dark. Then I took the time to read the description---this after seeing the incredible ranking that the good people of Amazon have bestowed upon this literary creation---and my eyes were opened. This is one funny book! Not at all what I expected. And in the process, you actually learn something. Hopefully this will help those of us out there who are punctuation deficient, and be funny to those who aren't. Would also recommend to really great reads (and from what I could tell, both of these were punctuation savvy and up to snuff)---one is a book titled The Birth of Venus and the other is one called The Bark of the Dogwood. Both seem to have all their "i's" crossed and "t's" dotted . . . or, whatever . . .
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