Author teaches through humor in ‘Eats, Shoots & Leaves’

It's incredible the impact that a simple comma can have.

This is underscored by a grammar joke that inspired Lynne Truss's novel "Eats, Shoots & Leaves": "A panda walks into a cafe. 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. 'Look it up.'

"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.' "

Through similar comical anecdotes, Truss informs readers the proper way to use punctuation while additionally relaying the message that grammar is too precious to become a lost art.

With chapters covering apostrophes, commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, hyphens, ellipses, brackets and many more writing tools, the book might seem like a torturous textbook, but that's far from the case. It's written in a narrative style as opposed to an instruction manual, and Truss's dry sense of humor and hilarious stories regarding the misuse of grammar are sure to have readers laughing.

By exposing awful grammar mistakes made by prominent companies and important campaigns, Truss allows her audience to revel in the amusement of poking fun at someone else's ignorance -- a joy that nobody can resist.

Truss also includes many common mistakes regarding her precious punctuation that most readers can relate to making at some point in their lives.

She acknowledges these misconceptions and then explains how to write properly, which creates somewhat of a group grammar therapy session.

Amidst reading the jokes, sarcasm and writing tips, something miraculous begins to occur.

You're actually learning things.

You now know that it's necessary to use hyphens when spelling out numbers such as forty-five or twenty-one.

You might fully comprehend what Vampire Weekend is talking about when they sing about Oxford commas.

You might even learn that possessive pronouns are not as jealous as they sound.

By the end of the book, you will be so accomplished in punctuation that grammar will be the least of your worries.

The first might be who to tell this new joke to: "A panda walks into a cafe ..."