| In 2002 Lynne Truss presented
Cutting a Dash, a well-received BBC Radio 4
series about punctuation, which led to the writing
of Eats, Shoots & Leaves.
The book became a runaway success in the UK,
hitting number one on the bestseller lists and
prompting extraordinary headlines such as Grammar
Book Tops Bestseller List (BBC News).
With more than 500,000 copies of her book in
print in her native England, Lynne Truss is ready
to rally the troops on this side of the pond with
her rousing cry, Sticklers unite!
Through sloppy usage and low standards on the
Internet, in e-mail, 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.
If there are only pedants left who care, then
so be it. This is a book for people who love
punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled.
From George Orwell shunning the semicolon, to
New Yorker editor Harold Ross's epic
arguments with James Thurber over commas, 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.
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