Eats, Shoots and Leaves

I'm sure you've all heard the cheesy joke about the panda bear who walks into a restaurant, eats his meal, and then shoots the waiter. As the panda runs out the door, the hostess chases him down and demands to know why he would do such a thing. He tosses her a badly punctuated wildlife manual and says, "I'm a panda. Look it up." She looks up the word "Panda" and reads, "Large bear-like mammal from Asia. Eats, shoots and leaves."
Well, a rather clever lady from England wrote a book using this joke as the title. I just finished reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, and I enjoyed it very much. It is meant to arouse the inner stickler in anyone who cares about correct punctuation and is bothered when people use it wrongly. Personally, bad grammar bothers me a lot more. For example, I hate express lanes that say "10 items or less," and I am quite bothered by the T-Mobile slogan, "Call whoever, whenever." However, I do appreciate good punctuation almost as much as good grammar. I know we all make mistakes (spelling, using prepositions without objects, etc...) in our writing and speaking, but things that are permanent should not contain mistakes! I mean things like books which have supposedly been proof-read, signs, advertisements, etc...

In her book, Lynne Truss gives many examples of how punctuation can change the meaning of something that has been written. Here is one of her examples that is less life-threatening than the panda one:

Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy -- will you let me be yours?
Jill

By simply changing the puctuation and capitalization, you can make the letter read:

Dear Jack,
I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men I yearn! For you I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be?
Yours,
Jill

Throughout the book she explains the history of all the common punctuation marks, as well as rules for punctuation (which most sticklers already know) in a humorous way with many good examples of people's errors. Here's a few funny ones:

Pupil's Entrance (on a very selective school, presumably)
Adult Learner's Week (lucky him)
Member's May Ball (but with whom will the member dance?)
Lands' End (mail-order company which roundly denies anything wrong with name)

Just yesterday I found this one on the Jamba Juice menu board:

Coldbuster Smoothie : Knock-out germs with this vitamin-loaded drink... (I can't remember the rest of the description.)
Apparently this smoothie contains some incredibly attractive infection that is so desirable, I should pay for it.

Now, according to Ms. Truss, I should sneak into the Jamba Juice kiosk around midnight and paint over that incorrect hyphen. Or, I should at least tell them about it. Maybe I could ask the Apostrophe Protection Society (yes, there is such a thing) to write them a letter.

The book I read is the American edition in which Lynne Truss interacts with the changes we Americans have made to English punctuation. She makes fun of us for things like always putting ending punctuation inside closing quotation marks or calling "round brackets" "parentheses." She's probably right; they did have the language first.

The last part of the book contains her rant about how e-mail and text-messaging have cause the decay of English punctuation and grammar. Here's how she feels about emoticons:

"You will know all about emoticons. Emoticons are the proper name for smileys. And a smiley is, famously, this:
:-)
Forget the idea of selecting the right words in the right order and channelling the reader's attention by means of artful pointing. Just add the right emoticon to your email and everyone will know what self-expressive effect you thought you kind-of had in mind. Anyone interested in punctuation has a dual reason to feel aggrieved about smileys, because not only are they a paltry substitue for expressing oneslf properly; they are also designed by people who evidently thought the punctuation marks on the standard keyboard cried out for an ornamental function. What's this dot-on-top-of-a-dot thing for? What earthly good is it? Well, if you look at it sideways, it could be a pair of eyes. What's this curvy thing for? It's a mouth, look! Hey, I think we're on to something."

Upon reading that, my inner stickler rises up against emoticons. Maybe I will stop using smileys in my e-mails; maybe I won't. But, if I do use one, it will certainly bother me like never before.