Lyn Truss's book Eats, Shoots and Leaves takes the topic of punctuation, which is generally regarded as boring, and shines light upon its importance, function, history and so on. The book's chapters cover apostrophes, commas, semicolons, colons, exclamation marks, question marks, quotation marks, italics, dashes, brackets, ellipses, emoticons and hyphens. Subject matter such as this, the kind that seems to belong in a text book, would normally not gain much attention. Eats, Shoots and Leaves, however, is a different story. Truss's effervescent voice and her incorporation of anecdotes, jokes and puns make Eats, Shoots and Leaves far more enjoyable than any other lesson on punctuation or grammar. She outlines the rules and provides examples as…show more content… It doesn't qualify as a classic simply because students across the nation are required to pick up a copy and read it before the start of school. I believe that because the topic of Truss's book is so important, and because it will continue to be important for many years to come, Eats, Shoots and Leaves qualifies as a classic. It applies to every person looking to communicate effectively, correctly and universally appeals to all readers and writers. This means that it basically applies to every person out there. The millions of copies sold prove this. Punctuation will always be important and correct punctuation will always be necessary in communication. The fact that the rules Truss outlines are timeless makes her book a…show more content… Both books highlight the importance of English, writing, and creating works that are grammatically correct as well as well written. Both are humorous, fairly easy to read and the authors both write in a very personal way. Both books could be considered fun and speak to the reader like a friend. Voice is important and is clear in both cases. They both apply to the uses of the English language and provide guidelines on creating works that are written correctly and tastefully. The authors share a passion of not only writing, but writing effectively. The subject matter as well as the diction differ however. Zinsser's book is written with diction that is more formal, while Truss's diction is informal and clearly more relaxed. Truss included slang from the present day and the tone and language weren't as rigid and academic. It is very clear that Truss's book was published more recently, while Zinsser's has been around for a while. The subject matter differed in the fact that Zinsser focuses far more on content and the construction of a piece of writing. His book highlighted more of what goes into writing a quality piece while Eats, Shoots and Leaves focuses on the proper use of punctuation. On Writing Well has a far broader topic, while Eats, Shoots and Leaves is only focused on punctuation. Both books combined give the reader immense knowledge on how exactly to craft nonfiction writing, and then how