Steve McIntyre writes: Lynn Truss‘ book on punctuation “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” received astonishing coverage.
The title of the book is based on the following joke:
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons. ‘Why?’ asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst 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. ‘Read the manual.’ 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.’
Had the manual been written by Peter Gleick, the manual would have read “eats, shoots, and leaves”.
===============================================================
Read the rest of the entry at Climate Audit here
Cartoon, in a wide circulation Australian newspaper where the original joke would never have been allowed: a zoo cage, with a sign that says “Italian Wombat Manga radici e foglii.” (And my spell checker is only set for English).
Nice to have a bit of humour, but you guys sure get carried away with trivia.
BTW, as others have pointed out, the Australian version of this joke (I wonder which came first?), is about our wombat which “eats roots and leaves”.
So in referring to a male who has several girlfriends, as a ‘wombat’, a comma is introduced after “eats” and “roots”.
In our street language ‘roots’ = fornicates.
This is quite interesting to Aussies, in the context of the US sports fan who ‘roots’ for his team.
And when Elvis sings “I want a rootie” I use to shudder!
Boyandgirl
To correct the phase
Pls put a space between boy and and and and and girl.
5 and’s in a row..
Just for reference, the word ‘pandemonium’ comes from a word meaning ‘City of All (pan) Demons,’ which is the capital city of the infernal region in John Milton’s epic poem, ‘Paradise Lost,’ (1667).