No one has ever made the proper placement of a comma as meaningful, funny and entertaining as Lynne Truss. Her #1 international bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, has turned the subject of punctuation into must-read material, prompting The Financial Times to declare, “Every company meeting should begin with a reading from it, followed by a prayer of thanks for its existence.”

A former television and theatre critic, literary editor and sports columnist for The Times of London, Truss had written three comic novels and numerous radio plays before taking a leap of faith. In a world in which an increasing number of people “don’t know their apostrophe from their elbow,” Truss felt the urge to write about a subject for which she was such a “stickler.”
 
Referring to the apostrophe as “our long- suffering little friend” and defining a semi-colon’s job as “calling a bunch of brawling commas to attention,” Truss “makes the history of punctuation a subject at once urgent, sexy and hilarious,” says The Independent.

She was warned by publishers that such a book would be “commercial suicide.” So when the book hit #1 on Britain’s bestseller lists (beating John Grisham), and won Book of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards, Truss humbly concluded, “There must be a real comfort in looking at something with sets of rules...There are a lot of very bright people around who have never had the training and who wonder, ‘Why do I put the apostrophe in?’”
 

If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic, I’d nominate her for sainthood.

Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes

Eats, Shoots & Leaves quickly became a bestseller in America, reaching #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. It has sold well over two million copies worldwide and is now available in German, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish and other languages. In July 2006, Random House published an illustrated version for young readers that became a New York Times Children's bestseller.

Truss followed her zero-tolerance approach to punctuation with a zero tolerance manual on wretchedly bad behavior. Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door (fall 2006), in which she addresses everything from cell phone exhibitionism to people walking four abreast on the sidewalk, was another New York Times bestseller.

Truss’ warm, reassuring and consistently amusing commentary turns an arcane topic into something compelling and even uproarious. In her speeches, she addresses subjects ranging from the decline of literacy in the internet age to the process of writing and the burden of choice in today’s consumer society.

Named Columnist of the Year for her work in Woman’s Journal, she has appeared on such programs as The Today Show, NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s 20/20.

Her latest book (July 2007) is The Girl's Like Spaghetti: Why, You Can't Manage Without Apostrophes! another illustrated guide to punctuation for young readers.

Whether on the page or the stage, Truss’s wit and love of language makes “sticklers” out of us all.