Before Lynne Truss wrote the bestselling punctuation book Eats, Shoots and Leaves in 2003, no one really paid that much attention to the history or the use of grammar in the mainstream.
Truss herself hadn't even really thought about it as a subject to be written about, she told Weekend Review at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature recently.
"I thought it was a clever and funny idea, because at that time I didn't think of punctuation as a subject. It's just something you do, not something you think about," she said.
The ever-popular title came about after her appearance on BBC Radio 4's Cutting a Dash programme, which aired topics such as whether the internet and e-mail are influencing punctuation.
She was approached by a publisher to write a small book on the subject, which would include the history and the usage of punctuation.
At the time, Truss said she was doing "odd jobs", appearing on radio and writing book reviews. Before, she had been writing for the daily UK broadsheet The Times and writing novels, living a quiet, comfortable life.
Then her sister died and it "threw everything up in the air", she said.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves was written in a carefree manner, she continued, which she enjoyed. She also realised that it was an original book. "I knew that no one had put these thoughts in this order before, because why would they?" she said, laughing.
The popularity of the book did surprise her, particularly finding out how many other grammar "sticklers" there are.
"We found the sticklers and then it turned out that there were a lot more sticklers in the world than we knew about," she said, after publishing an initial newspaper column asking for contributions for the book.
It amazed her, she continued, that she would be met in a place such as Cleveland, Ohio, by 500 people who loved the book.
"It was very lovely to think I was giving happiness to these complete strangers. In fact, it makes me almost cry thinking about it now. They were such nice people and it's such a small thing, to love punctuation. It doesn't do any harm, does it," she said.
At some book readings, however, her fans weren't too difficult to spot. One particular reading at the opening of a new library in Brighton (in the south of England) really stands out in her memory.
Other authors at the opening included a number of children's writers, whose fans queued up to have their books signed and mostly comprised bright-faced, enthusiastic children.
"I'd look up and there'd be someone at the back with a beard and a plastic bag, and I'd think ‘Oh, he's one of mine'," she laughed. "I didn't quite get the lovely demographic of these other people."
The title of Truss's book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves, is based on what she terms the "panda joke", which reads something like this:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire at the other patrons.
"Why?" asks the confused, surviving waiter amid the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.
"Well, I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."
The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation: "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
The example "eats, shoots and leaves" shows just how important that small comma is in terms of sentence structure. If the comma is removed, the sentence takes on the meaning that pandas consume vegetation of different sorts. When included in the sentence, it means the panda eats something, shoots a gun and then vacates the area.
The main point she is trying to make in the book, she said, is that punctuation was initially printers' marks but new generations don't view print in the same way as those who grew up in the era of print.
"A new generation is coming along that doesn't see print as having any extra authority. And the things that go with print that I hope we don't lose are the ability to follow a sentence — really follow a sentence into another sentence into another sentence, into another paragraph and another paragraph and to follow it, really be able to follow an author's or a writer's tone of voice, or the pacing or the rhythm," she emphasised.
Having been "all around the world" fighting the debate on the future of the humble apostrophe and its place in the future, Truss is "inclined to agree that it is dying".
"Basically, people are in complete confusion about it and the only sensible action is for it to die, really. But it's so useful, it's been such a useful mark," she said.
However much of a "stickler" she might call herself, as a former sub-editor, the writer and novelist does point out that she doesn't take time to criticise those who make punctuation mistakes.
One cannot point mistakes out to people, "because they're so upset to be told they've got something wrong", she said.
"So you're always in that position of suffering inwardly but not getting the pen out and changing it … because anyone who does that is really unpleasant."
Truss has written three novels and six works of non-fiction, including Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
A scriptwriter is at present working on a film on her.
