Eats, Shoots & Leaves

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Eats, Shoots & Leaves is a book written by Lynne Truss.[1] It explains how careful writing and punctuation helps writers communicate clearly. One example is the difference between the statements "eats, shoots and leaves" and "eats shoots and leaves." It explains by the example of a panda who walks into a restaurant, eats, draws a gun and shoots at the other patrons, and then leaves, blaming the incident on the instruction of a badly punctuated wildlife manual. The purpose of the book is to explain the importance of proper punctuation.

The book was interesting to read and a great commercial success – it was a best-seller. However, it had its own punctuation errors and inconsistencies, as a review in the New Yorker magazine pointed out.[2]

Related articles[change | change source]

References[change | change source]

  1. Truss, Lynne 2003. Eats, Shoots & Leaves. London: Profile. ISBN 978-1-86197-612-3
  2. Menand, Louis 2004. Bad comma: Lynne Truss's strange grammar.The New Yorker. [1]