Lynne Truss

A former television and theatre critic, literary editor and sports columnist for The Times of London, Truss had written three comic novels and numerous radio plays before taking a leap of faith. In a world in which an increasing number of people “don’t know their apostrophe from their elbow,” Truss felt the urge to write about a subject for which she was such a “stickler.”

Referring to the apostrophe as “our long- suffering little friend” and defining a semi-colon’s job as “calling a bunch of brawling commas to attention,” Truss “makes the history of punctuation a subject at once urgent, sexy and hilarious,” says The Independent.

She was warned by publishers that such a book would be “commercial suicide.” So when the book hit #1 on Britain’s bestseller lists (beating John Grisham), and won Book of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards, Truss humbly concluded, “There must be a real comfort in looking at something with sets of rules...There are a lot of very bright people around who have never had the training and who wonder, ‘Why do I put the apostrophe in?’”

If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic, I’d nominate her for sainthood.

Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes 

Eats, Shoots & Leaves quickly became a bestseller in America, reaching #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. It has sold well over two million copies worldwide. Soon to be translated into German, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish and other languages, the book has become a testament to the growing interest in the preservation of punctuation. “It’s triggered a lot of people’s imagination,” says Truss. “They’ve become aware that punctuation is quite a good system for making yourself clear.”

Truss’s warm, reassuring and consistently amusing commentary turns an arcane topic into something compelling and even uproarious. In her speeches, she addresses subjects ranging from the decline of literacy in the internet age to the process of writing and the burden of choice in today’s consumer society.

Named Columnist of the Year for her work in Woman’s Journal, Truss has appeared on such programs as The Today Show, NewsNight with Aaron Brown, and ABC’s 20/20.

The Lynne Truss Treasury, a collection of her earlier works, as well as a new non-fiction book about the importance of manners, will be published in 2005.

Whether on the page or the stage, Truss’s wit and love of language makes “sticklers” out of us all.