Hello everyone,
Welcome to Alan's Weekend Words. This week I decided to talk a little bit about two books I have that help know more about the English language.
The first one has become very well known and has sold many thousands of copies. It is called "Eats, Shoots and Leaves", written by Lynne Truss. It is a book about punctuation. Basically, the title shows the idea behind the book. It shows that with written English, punctuation can make a big difference to meaning. The title shows a very good example: the idea is that the sentence describes the food of a Panda. A panda eats shoots and leaves. When we apply punctuation, that is a comma it means something different. Eats, shoots and leaves would mean something like this: a person walks into a restaurant, he then eats something, then he shoots his gun at someone and then leaves the restaurant. So, he eats, shoots and leaves. Can you understand the difference? What has happened is that with the panda sentence the only verb is "eats" whereas with the comma put in, then the words eats, shoots and leaves are all verbs (action words)
This books shows more examples and was written by Lynne Truss to show the importance of punctuation with written English.
The other book I want to mention is called "Eats, Shites and Leaves"
This book is a jokey title which has copied the "Eats Shoots and Leaves" book.
Shite is another word for crap and also sounds a bit like "shoots" Basically this book is a parody of the first book - as its subtitle is "Crap English and how to use it" written by "A. Parody". Even though the idea behind this book is a joke about the seriousness of the first book - it is actually quite a useful book for understanding more about how English is sometimes used badly - and where this can lead to misunderstandings and awkward moments.
So, I recommend both books. They both have their uses when learning more about English. Next time I'll discuss some examples from the books. In the meantime, if you would like to buy or borrow them from a library (if it is possible where you live) I've put the ISBN numbers on the podcast text.
Take care and bye for now
"Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss ISBN 1-86197-612-7"Eats, Shites and Leaves" by A.Parody ISBN 1-84317-098-1
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2 comments:
Hello Alan,
I didn't know there was such a difference of meaning in English due to the punctuation. In fact, I thought that punctuation was not as important in English language than in French language because we use much more punctuation in my country.
I agree with you : punctuation can change all the meaning of a sentence. That is why I use it a lot when i write. It is not only something which allows you to have a break in reading but also a way to show that you are going to give an explication, or complete an idea, or many other things.
Thanks for this article. It means that I have to pay attention to the punctuation in my readings to be able to use it in the English way (if there is a difference with the French way). That could be interesting to study :-)
Very nice information. It will help to progress English level.
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