Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Extra, Extra
Early Addition
For the copy editors, grammarians, and fastidious English majors in our midst, Gothamist is sad that Lynne Truss's book Eat Shoots & Leaves is only coming Stateside this spring. It is, at the Times calls it in a flattering feature about Ms. Truss, "witty foray into the shadowy world of punctuation." The book, an unexpected bestseller in Britain, would have made a great stocking stuffer, but we'll have to settle for making it a Easter basket/ Passover surprise gift. And the title is a play on a panda grammar joke:
A panda walks into a cafe.
The panda orders a sandwich, eats it and then fires a gun into the air. On his way out, he tosses a badly punctuated wildlife manual at the confused bartender and directs him to the entry marked "Panda."
Whereupon the bartender reads: "Panda. Large black-and-white bearlike mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
Though some may think the book's cover is catchy, we believe the book's success is because it's really telegraphing, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves and Is the Cutest Animal." If a book came out with a picture of San Diego baby panda cub Mei Sheng (below), it'd be an automatic bestseller.
Buy Eats, Shoots & Leaves from Amazon.co.uk
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
I saw that article. Looks like a cool book. Sure beats reading the AP style guide.
Actually, Pandas Bears aren't "bear-like mammals" at all but are, in fact, actually bears. The Lesser Panda, on the other hand, is a kind of raccoon.
Worst... joke... ever...
Doesn't the serial comma rule apply here, i.e.,
eats, shoots, and leaves?
I thought pandas aren't really like bears but they are closer to bears than raccoons. Anyway...yeah, the joke is silly, but it mentions a panda!
its a Harvard comma. you can leave it or take it out. its all about preference but most newspapers will leave the last comma out. [gawd, I spent way too much time in j-school]
I agree with Eli that it's the worst joke ever. But the in the original version of the joke,the panda isn't ordering a sandwich but employing the services of a prostitute. I'll let you work it out, but presumably it was deemed a bit too close to the knuckle for a book that probably found its way into a good few schoolkids' Christmas stockings...
Holy cow. There are two postings here from people who don't get the joke. And it would be wrong of me to explain. Please, folks, re-read it!
special to larrydvm: agreed.
Jen, that's one seriously scary picture of a panda. It's like out of "28 Days Later" or something.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but ordinarily a panda:
eats shoots and leaves (two types of things a panda eats. These would be: 1) shoots, and 2) leaves.
If the punctuation is wrong in the sentence, it could be turned into:
Eats, shoots & leaves.
As three verbs. The panda in the story is doing the second, and that is the joke.
This could additionally be made "off color", with a change in the fact pattern and a different understanding of the verb "shoots", involving copulation.
Actually, when I saw the cover, I thought it was a pretty witty way to sell the book, even without the bear. But bears do sell.
papercraft panda:
http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/eng/papercraft/w-animals4/panda/index.html
I thought pandas aren't really like bears but they are closer to bears than raccoons. Anyway...yeah, the joke is silly, but it mentions a panda!