Eats, Shoots and Leaves

We haven't seen much of Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel or England's Prime Minister Theresa May lately. Probably boning up for the G-20 conference and dealing with everything else that goes on in their countries. We do however have this recent photo of Ms. Merkel with China's President Xi Jinping at the Berlin Zoo on Wednesday.

Ms. Merkel's choice of a teal-colored top with black pants is not doing anything for her effort to gain lengths on Ms. May as they come down the stretch in the 'World's Most Photographed Woman with Clothes On' race, but that's not why she's here.

She and President Xi are at the Berlin Zoo ostensibly for a welcoming ceremony for two new pandas at the zoo.

The real reason for the photo is to promote the Chinese edition of Lynne Truss's seminal best seller on punctuation, 'Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation."

The panda in the background on the bench is doing exactly what the title tells us, without a comma after the word 'eats.' They are eating shoots and leaves, bamboo I suppose.

Anyone familiar with Ms. Truss's book probably applauds the fact that the book is being translated into Chinese. Ms. Truss covers many of the punctuation symbols in her chapters. It will of course be interesting to learn what the Chinese symbol for an apostrophe is in their language. Especially how they handle it after an "s."

Any guess?

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