Eats, Shoots, & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne TrussGotham Books, 2004 (originally Profile Books, 2003)

This weekend, I saw a cash register with a scrolling display that made me want to scream: “Thank’s for shoping at [store name].” Errors in spelling and punctuation jump out at me and grate on my nerves: it’d be fair to say that I’m a stickler when it comes to language and its usage. Somehow, though, I didn’t like this book nearly as much as I thought I would. There were clever moments, and I liked reading about the origins and histories of the various punctuation marks (e.g. “in the 16th century, Erasmus gave the attractive name lunulae to round brackets, in reference to their moon-like profile”), but overall, this book struck me as flat.