"Praying for someone --anyone-- to write a book about punctuation with a panda on the cover"

So, I'm arguably late to this bandwagon, published in 2003, but nonetheless must share.

I love this book. It's rare one can say they couldn't put down a grammar book -- even for a grammar nerd like myself. But Lynne Truss does such a great job of presenting the basics with interesting dashes of history and hilarious bits of humor, it is quite accomplished. Moreso than that, it is one of those occasions where I would really like to meet the writer, since from page one I was exclaiming "she is my kind of people!" (You know, the rare and elusive people that understand some obscure -- or not-so-obscure -- facet of personality and demonstrate it just as you would.)

The book begins, for example:

A printed banner has appeared on the concorse of a petrol station near to where I live. "Come inside," it says, "for CD's, VIDEO's, DVD's, and BOOK's."

[Insert literal cringe from me here]

If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of the pulse, you should probably put down this book at once. By all means congratulate yourself that you are not a pedant or even a stickler; that you are happily equipped to live in a world of plummeting punctuation standards; but just don't bother to go any further

from Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss

She is so like me she predicted my reaction.

In addition, I really like her approach to grammar. There is a lot published about the "rules" and argument about the rules. But Truss does a spectacular job of examining grammar for what it truly is -- something to lead comprehension and clarify words into sense. This interpretation is one I personally agree with, and one many of my teachers espoused. For it doesn't matter if your work is grammatically perfect if it isn't understandable -- because you can get away with a lot of jargon and still be grammatically correct. Case and point: the beginning of A Tale Of Two Cities is a 3-page sentence, and it is grammatically correct. But just because you can doesn't mean its best for your reader. And more and more, we're realizing writing isn't this act done separate from the world for purely creative reasons, it's done for a reader. So the rules change. But Truss covers the basics with a wonderfully editorial eye on clarity and making them understandable.

Gold Star to all the sticklers.