Eats, Shoots & Leaves

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

I first read this book when I was working in the library of a charter school. My boss kept suggesting I read it...but really, why did I want to read a book on grammar and punctuation? I had been through my mandatory 13 years of school and even managed to get a bachelors degree. I'm glad I did. This book is hilarious...and so very helpful! Since I've read the book I've been more aware of how I write.

I know what you are thinking: Christie, I've read your blog. Maybe you need to read that book again. Or maybe repeat a couple of those years in school.

You're probably right.

So what brings this up? In my blog surfing today I happened upon The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks: Misinterpreting Bad Punctuation Since 2005.
Check it out. It's pretty funny. It chronicles little quotation mishaps like this:

It kind of reminds me of the Friends episode where Joey doesn't understand when to do the air quotation marks, so he just puts them in "randomly."