Eat Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss
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“Eats Shoots & Leaves,” by Lynne Truss, is a small book containing both humor and the rules of English punctuation. The title of this book comes from a joke about a wildlife manual with poor punctuation that said a giant panda “eats, shoots & leaves,” which is a verb, verb, and verb. The way it should have been written is “eats shoots and leaves,” which is a verb, noun, and noun. The different punctuation changes the meaning of the phrase.
Truss divides the book into a several chapters to emphasize individual punctuations marks, starting with the “tractable apostrophe.” The apostrophe was first put into use by the English language in the 16th century. The apostrophe indicates a possessive in a singular noun, as in “The boy’s hat.” It also indicates time or quantity for example, “In one weeks time.” Apostrophes can indicate the omission of both figures in dates and letters. An apostrophe is used for strange, non-standard English, and plurals in letters and words. Truss continues on to give examples of “plain illiteracy” and other examples of when the apostrophe is more difficult to use.
In the following chapter entitled “That’ll Do, Comma,”