I finally obtained a copy of Eats, Shoots and Leaves, the Christmas present that wasn't, as I discussed in the February PESA News. It is excellent value.

Readers of the February column may recall I also referred to the old geophysicists' joke having been sanitised by switching shoots for roots. This led to a puzzled call from a much-respected academic of the American persuasion, asking what this shoots versus roots was all about.

I began to suggest that it was a universal industry joke about geophysicists, and realised mid-sentence that it was no such thing: North Americans do not use the term 'root' in the coarse copulatory sense so beloved of Australian schoolyards, and the pun makes no sense to them.

It occurred to me later that the story was not only out of country, but largely out of time too. It belonged to those earlier eras of geophysical exploration (unfortunately, mine) when weeks and months at a time were spent on seismic or gravity crews. This is not the experience of many young geophysicists today, and the joke probably makes little sense to them either.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves is the title of a new book about punctuation by British writer and editor Lynne Truss. The title comes from a story about a panda who has been raised on a poorly punctuated field guide to animal behaviour. He eventually wanders into a bar, gobbles down the counter-lunch, fires his gun in the air and departs. You see, the book he grew up reading advised that the adult panda 'eats, shoots and leaves'. What havoc that errant comma caused!

For those who haven't figured it out, the geophysicists' joke was based on the same pun and punctuation error, except that the wombat, to which the geophysicist was likened, ate roots, not shoots.

Lynne Truss's – her preferred punctuation, and mine – book began as a London Radio 4 series called Cutting a Dash. In late 2002, Andrew Franklin of Profile Books publishing house convinced Truss to expand the essays into a book.

Eats, Shoots and Leaves was published in November 2003 and became an instant and largely unexpected success - with a capital S. An initial print run of 15,000 pointed to thoughts of possible sales of the order of 50,000. It sold out immediately, and it kept selling out as quickly as Profile could print more copies. By end December, over 500,000 copies had been sold. It was Number 1 on the official UK book-selling list and Number 1 at online bookshop Amazon. It was sold-out Australia-wide by mid-December.

It was good to be reminded of the value of punctuation. I tend to fixate on incorrect use of words, and the accompanying poor punctuation slips by as a minor transgression. Ms Truss will have none of that: it is serious business.

There's certainly no denying the general decline in punctuation. The many reasons include the shift away from rigorous schooling in such things, beginning in the 1970s, and the more recent emergence of email, causing many people to be writing more than they used to.

It is hard, for instance, to understand why use of the full stop (dot in modern speak), arguably the easiest of all punctuation, is such a problem for many people nowadays. It is ideal punctuation for the short sentences of email, but it is the comma that has become the default punctuation mark. Consider I can't see you tonight, however I'll be here in the morning, we can talk then. You should see three punctuation errors in this – though I notice that my grammar-check program is quite happy (and shouldn't be) with the comma before however.

Truss does not see her work as a guide to punctuation. Indeed she declares on the first page of the Introduction that those people for whom 'satanic splinklings of redundant apostrophes', as in 'CD's, video's and book's' 'cause no little gasp of horror or quickening of pulse should probably put the book down at once'.

She has written the book, she says, more as a help and reassurance to those who suffer with her the pains that poor punctuation brings to those who suffer the pains of poor punctuation. She speaks of those of us who so suffer as having 'a seventh sense': we see dead punctuation. This works best if whispered in terror. The dead punctuation may be invisible to everyone else, but we can see it everywhere!

So, Truss sees her book in the tradition of those self-esteem manuals that give you permission to love yourself; this gives permission to love punctuation, to accept that seventh sense and, like the boy in the film, to help the dead on their way.

Beyond that reassurance, however, the book is a call to action, a demand that all the 'sticklers' for correct punctuation should commence a campaign of corrective action.
'Sticklers of the world, unite' is her battle cry. Go forth with bright red pens and markers. Be a nuisance. Correct signs. Send back letters. You will not be alone, is her assurance – and she didn't know the half of it.

Turns out there are a lot more people seeing the dead punctuation than she could have imagined, and perhaps her book will motivate them to do something about it.

There are three common metaphors for punctuation – the stitching that holds the fabric of language together; the traffic signals that direct us to slow down, stop, take a detour, and such; and the courtesy to help the reader avoid stumbling and falling in confusion. Truss is clearly a supporter of the 'good manners' imagery.

'It is no accident', she suggests, 'that the word punctilious (attentive to formality or etiquette) should come from the same original root word as punctuation'.

Not that she advocates pedantry in all this – well, not too much anyway. She seeks the common ground between those whom Kinsley Amis, in The King's English, called 'berks' – the outrageously slipshod – and 'wankers' – the unbendingly over- precise. So the aim is to be staunch, because it is important to be staunch, and to be flexible, because it is necessary to be flexible.

So what can we do about this in Words? Perhaps it is time to look at the simple punctuation signs again, and remind ourselves how they are best used. For those who doubt the value of this exercise, I offer the following example

I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we're apart. I can be forever happy – will you let me be yours?

I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we're apart I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours…

We will remind ourselves in coming months that if our words are to sing, then the punctuation must be there, as Truss put it, to help the reader hum the tune.

Peter Purcell