Punctuate.

I don't recall the last time punctuation was brought up as a topic of conversation at a party.  And I'm fairly certain "You know what this world needs?... Better punctuation!" is a pick up line destined for failure.  Yet Lynne Truss has sold millions of copies of her book "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." The title is based on a panda bear joke that is bound to make at least every English teacher I know laugh. From www.eatsshootsandleaves.com:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

This is an admittedly bad English-grammar-nerd joke. So if that didn't entertain you, here is a real panda that eats shoots and leaves.

There are, in fact, a lot of entertaining examples of how punctuation can affect the meaning of a sentence. My favorite:

A woman without her man is nothing.

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Which do you like better?

I hope my punctuation has been correct....

Noggin Fodder
www.nogfod.com
Feed your head.