Last week, I wrote about an unlikely bestselling book called Crap Towns: the 50 worst places to live in the UK. I argued, however, that, in view of the British fondness for complaining and laughing at themselves, the success of this book wasn’t really such a surprise. In any case, for surprise value, it has been beaten out of sight this Christmas by another book. This is a book which, despite having no advertising budget at all and costing £10 (euro 14) in a rather nasty looking yellow-covered hardback, has sold around 150,000 copies in not much more than a month. And what is the subject of this blockbuster which has captured the imagination of the nation’s reading public? I’ll tell you. It’s about… punctuation!

Not exactly a subject to set pulses racing, you would think. The author, Lynne Truss, the publishers and critics are all at a loss to explain the success of Eats, Shoots and Leaves: the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Two possible clues are contained in the title. One is the book’s no-holds-barred, tell-it-like-it-is attitude to what is right and (especially) what is wrong. Like most people in the western world, the British have a black-and-white attitude to correctness in the written word, so they approve of zero tolerance for offenders. (One reviewer of the book mentioned how he would like to shoot such people.) The other is the book’s use of humour.

The title, in fact, is derived from the following story: A panda goes into a bar and orders a sandwich. After he has finished it, he fires a gun into the air and then walks towards the door. When the barman asks why, the panda throws him a wildlife encyclopaedia and says “Look it up”. Under the relevant entry the barman reads: “Panda: Bear-like mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves”.

bear at (hier): kei in.

entry (hier): trefwoord.

fondness: voorliefde.

to be at a loss: totaal niet kunnen verklaren.

to leave: vertrekken.

leave: blad.

mammal: zoogdier.

no-holds-barred: alle middelen zijn toegestaan.

offender: overtreder.

punctuation: interpunctietekens.

to set pulses racing: opwinden.

for surprise value: tot ieders verbazing.

to shoot: schieten

shoot: jonge tak.

wildlife: wilde dieren.