When it comes to punctuation, there isn't a rule book per se - rather, there are many rule books that often contradict one another.
For instance, some rule books advocate using the serial comma. Say you have a series of three or more words – eats, shoots, and leaves. To use a serial comma means putting a comma after every word as shown. Other writing guides, like Eats, Shoots and Leaves, tell you to leave it out unless it's used for clarification.
Sound pedantic? Well, yes it is. But that's punctuation for you.
With Eats, Shoots and Leaves, English author, Lynne Truss, invites us into her stickler world, but she does so with great humour in a very Cranky Old People kind of way.
At its most successful, the book forces its readers to stop and think about the everyday use of punctuation.
But it doesn’t quite work as a rule book that everyone can use. Despite her impassioned plea for the written word to be mistake free, she cannot be all things to all readers. It's very difficult trying to be perfect at punctuation when there are so many rules with so many exceptions to them.
Eats, Shoots and Leaves does give you a good basic guide to punctuation that will help you when you're writing your own words - as long as you keep in mind that the rules can vary.
More than anything, this book is an entertaining discussion about punctuation - a topic that is usually about as far away from entertaining as you can get - and a dynamic way of getting everyone talking about all those misplaced apostrophes, commas, and dashes.