Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynn Truss

This book makes an impassioned plea for the continued importance of punctuation as marker of clarity and style. It consists of several essays (some longer and some shorter) on different punctuation marks including the comma, the dash, the semi-colon, the colon, the apostrophe, the hyphen, the question mark, the exclamation point, and even the emoticon. I agree strongly with some of its observations, and disagree just as strenuously about others (although the latter is hardly surprising as the author punctuates according to British conventions, and I find some of them, especially regarding the location of terminal punctuation marks and closing quotation marks, entirely unsettling). But I applaud her two most important theses: punctuation matters, and some rules about punctuation should be strictly observed, while others are matter of style and taste. The essays themselves cover a wide swath of ground: the history of punctuation, humorous observations on why punctuation is important and why those who care about punctuation are so-self important, and some rules and guidelines to effective (British) English punctuation. If you're just looking for a style guide, there are better places to go. If you're looking for entertainment and someone who cares deeply about language, you've come to the right place, in addition to helpful observations about style.