Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Eats, Shoots & Leaves offers a humorous, yet instructive overview of how punctuation rules play a huge part in our writing language and how today’s society has become overly relaxed about using the right punctuations marks, leaving grammar-concerned people like her frustrated.

A language is like a living organism. It lives and develops with time, it twists and changes every once in a while, and as new people learn it, it alters its structure. However, for the grammar-conscious people out there, it seems that a language is much more than just a way of communicating.

Writing is an activity that must be carried out under certain rules. These rules are set in place by people way before us, and they will exist long before we’re gone, which is why grammar is a sacred concept. The apostrophe seems to be the punctuation mark that people consider the least in their writing.

Essentially, there are only eight correct ways of using the apostrophe:

For a possessive singular noun  When you want to tell time or quantity In the case of omission of figures in dates To indicate the omission of letters For non-standard English For stating Irish names For plural letters To indicate plural word forms

For a punctuation fanatic, misplacing apostrophes in conjunctions like “CD’s and Book’s” is a grave act, much like a criminal action in the world of grammar. For this reason, the author wants to shed light on all the proper ways of using apostrophes, while emphasizing the wrong ones too.

Commas are considered volatile punctuation marks, as the author can place them wherever they see fit. They are often used to style up a text and offer a different connotation, so the rules that make this punctuation mark work are flexible. Still, they’re there.

The author highlights seven rules for using commas:

Enumerating lists  Conjuncting two sentences Filling gaps Pointing direct speech  Separating an interjection  For “weak interruptions” (Bracketing commas)  “Not using them like an idiot” (Author’s choice)

Now, people aren’t necessarily using these instructions a la carte. But that’s what the author hopes to change. Although commas are flexible, people should still care for these rules and try to keep grammar intact and make use of it in their writing.

Overusing commas is a violation of at least two rules, one of which is rule seven. However, not using them can also cause a sentence to look like a hard-to-read, infinite accumulation of words. Naturally, you don’t want that either. Just like with everything, we need balance when it comes to commas.