Book summary

Who cares about the difference between "its" and "it's" or "whose" and "who's"? To the shock of everyone--including the author--apparently a lot of people do: Lynne Truss's lively look at the perils of punctuation took the UK by storm. A British radio personality, novelist, and self-described "stickler," Truss marshals all her wit and erudition to come down on the side of proper punctuation, and she doesn't care if people think she's an obsessive, persnickety, nitpicking nut. It's important! (After all, in 1351, a man named Roger Casement was hanged in England because of the presence of a comma in the Treason Act.) Unafraid to bash, curse, and ridicule such horrors as redundant apostrophes and wandering commas, Truss--amidst the jokes and some interesting history--makes an uncompromising case for the reclaiming of our punctuational heritage in the interests of not only good communication but a more civilized society.

Media reviews

"But this is more than a witty, elegant and passionate book that should be on every writer's shelf....Lynne Truss's book is...as much an argument for clear thinking as it is a pedantic defence of obsolete conventions of written language."