Contrary to Popular Opinion...

...ESL does not simply mean English as a Second Language.

It also stands for Lynn Truss's classic book about the power of punctuation. I've heard this one before, but let's review for nostalgia's sake:

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda 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, sure enough, finds an explanation.
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."
So punctuation really does matter, even if it is only occasionally a matter of life and death.

I have, of course, my opinion about how far to the "grammar police" spectrum we should go, but she makes a valid point.

http://eatsshootsandleaves.com/esl.html

Ta,
Beckie