From the back of the book:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons.
'Why?' asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
'Well, I'm a panda,' he says, at the door. 'Look it up.'
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. 'Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'
Who knew there could be a witty, engaging, and entertaining book about punctuation? This is that book.
Author Lynne Truss, a self designated grammar 'stickler ', helps readers learn the proper use of all those different points of punctuation in the english language. Along the way, she points out some of the most common errors and their grammatically tragic consequences (see Panda illustration above).
This book is a rallying call for a return to proper punctuation usage in an internet and texting age that seems to be racing to destroy thoughtful and grammatically consistent use of the english language. There is even a Punctuation Repair Kit included, which is full of stickers of commas, colons, semicolons, and question marks for sticklers to correct public punctuation errors.
*I realize I probably misused some punctuation in this post... Sticklers, feel free to point these out.