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When Lynne Truss was 9, long before she was crowned the Queen of Proper Punctuation, she set out to write her own fairy tale, which began with a line of dialogue:
"So your the wicked witch."
Truss' older sister immediately corrected her, saying she meant "you're" not "your."
Forty-two years later, Truss remembers that she felt "humiliated. I never finished that story, but I certainly learned the difference between your and you're."
Three years ago, Truss, a former British newspaper columnist, wrote a short, witty book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.
After a first printing of 15,000 copies, it caught on. It became a best seller in Britain and then in the USA, selling more than 2 million copies.
Now she has written an illustrated children's version, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: Why, Commas Really DO Make a Difference! (Putnam's, $15.99). It opens with the same joke, toned down for kids:
A panda walks into a library, eats a sandwich, shoots an arrow, then begins to leave.
The librarian asks why. The panda shows her a poorly punctuated reference book that notes that the panda is a bear-like mammal that "eats, shoots and leaves."
The new book is a kinder, gentler and simplified version of the more militant original that lamented the deterioration of grammatical skills and demanded that "sticklers unite."
Artist Bonnie Timmons, who inspired and drew cartoons for the TV show Caroline in the City, contributes a series of funny illustrations of the consequences of a misplaced comma.
For example, above the caption "Look at that huge hot dog!" is a picnic with a larger-than-life hot dog, coated with mustard.
The facing page says, "Look at that huge, hot dog!" and shows a larger-than-life dog that is panting and dripping with sweat.
As the book explains, without a comma, huge modifies hot dog. Adding the comma turns huge and hot into adjectives that both modify dog.
In New York to promote the book, Truss says it grew out of her first book tour when parents, librarians and teachers suggested a children's version.
Her original idea was more complex. She wanted to personify punctuation marks: "Mummy would be the multi-tasking comma. Daddy would be the full-stop period, saying, "That's enough.'"
On reflection, she decided that "the gender politics would be touchy, and it probably wouldn't help kids."
Her publisher is marketing the book for ages 6 and up, although Truss, who doesn't have children, says, "6 may be a bit young. But by 8 or so, kids should be ready."
Truss hopes the book is the first in a series of three books for children. Next, "we're boldly taking on the apostrophe," then the hyphen.
No plans yet for the semicolon.
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