LONDON (Reuters) - Punctuation seemed to be headed for the scrap heap in the UK till writer Lynne Truss came to the rescue. Taking a zero tolerance approach to grammatical lapses, she wrote a sprightly guide to punctuation, Eats, ShootsandLeaves, that has sold more than half a million copies in Britain alone and soared to the top of bestseller lists. While she agrees that the internet, e-mail and text messaging have widened people's horizons, she deplores their tendency to make punctuation seem unnecessary.

　　Truss, who says she is a stickler for accuracy and not an obsessive pedant, thinks the English have lost touch with the language they invented and gave to the world. She pointedly does not single out the Americans for blame. "American education seems to take grammar quite seriously," she told Reuters before leaving on a 10-city, coast-to-coast tour of North America for the launch of the book there in April. "My sense of it is that British English is worse actually than American English. I think Americans really like rules. I think we in Britain are very slapdash and don't care if we are right or wrong."

　　The book's odd title stems from the joke about a panda that walks into a caf . He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air.

　　"Why?" asks the bewildered waiter as the panda heads for the exit. The animal produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

　　"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

　　The waiter turns to the relevant entry and all is revealed: "Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."