Talk:Eats, Shoots & Leaves

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Shouldn't this redirect to the more complete Eats, Shoots and Leaves article? The book's title actually does have the "&," though. --Waiting4beckett 16:05, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

1 Review Link
2 Grammar and Syntax
3 Ampersands
4 The joke
5 Smileys (JFB)

[edit] Review Link

The New Yorker review is no longer available online. Remove link?John2429 20:35, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grammar and Syntax

I was amazed to find a plethora of grammatical errors in Eats, Shoots & Leaves. And I do not like ampersands in prose! LoopZilla 17:39, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I found some mistakes too, although I didn't have a notepad to hand when reading it. I think they should be included. I might re-read it and include them. Damiancorrigan 23:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

The tag-line on the book's cover is missing a hyphen: it should be The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. To refer to a "Tolerance Approach" doesn't make sense, nor does a "Zero Approach"! 62.56.104.146 19:23, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ampersands

The ampersand (&) is an often over-used abbreviation for the word and. Its use should be limited to a few situations.

This is the first sentence of All about ampersands. The article then asserts:

Do not use an ampersand in general writing simply to abbreviate the word and.

LoopZilla 08:47, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I believe that ampersands in titling are acceptable. Dweller 11:15, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The joke

The "eats shoots and leaves" joke with which I'm familiar is much simpler. The book in question was a dictionary rather than a wildlife manual, and it was not badly punctuated; it was simply misinterpreted. The punctuation problem in that case is that some people leave out commas, and the sentence was interpreted as if a comma had been left out. Since apparently the joke doesn't appear anywhere in "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", shouldn't the simpler form of the joke be in this article? It almost seems as if the joke has been modified to more directly suit the purposes of this book. —Deadcode 17:45, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I have noticed several articles which include some tangential piece of information which requires the use of 'adult' (as in 'not appropriate for youngsters') language or themes. A recent example is the alternate version of the title joke recently added to this article. Is the benefit of adding such material worth the downside of making an article (and therefore, Wikipedia in general) unsuitable for young users? This is an area of policy with which I am not familiar; I would appreciate the input of admins and more experienced editors. Special-T 15:09, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:NOT#Wikipedia is not censored --Keolah 00:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I think it should be noted somewhere that this is an older joke, which the writer adapted to sanitise it. The joke needn't be written out in full, it could just be mentioned that the same punchline is used as a reference to the Panda being a poor lover. It'd be good find a reference for this Alan Davies 23:57, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

The writer didn't adapt it, though I believe she added the "badly-punctuated" bit. I had heard both versions of the joke long before the book came along. Damiancorrigan 18:15, 5 January 2007 (UTC)