Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Ok. So you're going to either totally agree with me on this, or think I'm a total dork. Either way I have been dying to share my feelings on what I deem to be one of the most entertaining books ever written--"Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss. What on earth is a book with that title about? Well...
"A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“‘Why?’ asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“‘I'm a panda,’ he says at the door. ‘Look it up.’
"The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

If you don't get why that's funny, you can stop reading this blog entry right now. This is "A witty look at the amusing foibles of punctuation" (Reader's Digest). The version I purchased comes complete with a punctuation repair kit consisting of stickers of various sizes of commas, apostrophes, semicolons, colons and periods so that those of us who are punctuation sticklers can go forth and correct the punctuation bloopers that drive us crazy every day. At this point--if you're not a stickler like me--you may be wondering what kind of crazy person cares about punctuation outside of English teachers. Lest you deem my nit-picking as unimportant, let me share a little excerpt from the book to illustrate why punctuation is important and why I am uniting with other sticklers in the cause for punctuation justice.

Compare these two sentences:
A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

There you have it. The amazing work of punctuation at its best (note: not it's best). That one drives me especially crazy day in and day out. C'mon people--what grade do we learn about contractions--1st grade? “Its” and “it's” are NOT interchangeable!!! Holy cow.

One ironic thing is that I unintentionally purchased the British version of the book (the author is British). I was not aware that there are both American and British versions. Not very far into the book I noticed a period outside quotation marks. Oh my. I was aghast. In a published book on punctuation, no less! But then soon the author explained that while in American English the ending punctuation mark is ALWAYS INSIDE the quotation marks, British English allows some kind of strange willy-nillyness--inside or outside. I can't quite figure out if it's arbitrary or if there are rules to the use. But IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY!! Every single time I see that stupid period outside like this ". I feel a compulsory need to correct it to this." Lesson learned: When purchasing a book written by a British author, always look for the American version. Blurg.

So as you can see, I'm a little passionate about this. I'm only half way through the book and I LOVE it. I keep trying to share little blurbs with Nathan because I find them so amusing, but he gives me the stink eye and has asked that I refrain from any future "read and telling." So I am forced to share my thoughts here without infringing on copyright laws of the book. I also missed my book club meeting about it because I went visiting teaching instead. Boo hoo--but duty called. So, sorry to all you who are still reading this and thinking I'm totally strange. But maybe there are a few of you out there who share my same passion for punctuation. Do share, and then maybe we can debate whether you think the Oxford comma should stay or go. In the mean time, do understand that while I may internally be cursing your blogs, texts, and emails for their lack of punctuation (that was using an Oxford comma, by the way), I will refrain from scolding you, and will continue to bite my tongue. But be aware that it's starting to get a little sore from the biting.