grammar

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
312a794	The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.	world humor misunderstandings problems troubles grammar	Michel de Montaigne
ff65dc7	And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.	humour humor star-trek-references grammar-humor space-travel science-fiction grammar	Douglas Adams
19bd5dc	Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.	immortality grammar	Margaret Atwood
43f12b8	The rule is: don't use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.	grammar stupid	Lynne Truss
aa216ac	I have no idea what that is, but yawn, anyway, just on principle. Eat up. Pancakes is brain food. Apparently not grammar food. Wow.You college girls are mean.	eve-rosser claire-danvers grammar	Rachel Caine
3d56c1d	Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Misplace a single or and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge.	words syntax language grammar	Douglas Coupland
6ca4234	What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?	humor lynne-truss sentence-structure english-language punctuation grammar	Lynne Truss
e71031e	"Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation."	punctuation manners grammar	Lynne Truss
d40ef1c	Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.	syllable vowels maniac grammar	Jerry Spinelli
e1cec5e	We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world--indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states--the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities.	reading humanism language grammar	Peter Sloterdijk
65f8f12	"Stupid English." "English isn't stupid," I say. "Well, my English teacher is." He makes a face. "Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me." "Why not?" "He says lunch isn't a subject."	humor grammar school	Jodi Picoult
89bafc1	Don't cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.) Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.) Lose control. Don't think. Don't get logical. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)	margin punctuation line spelling grammar	Natalie Goldberg
8415864	Grammar, he saw, was agreement, community, consensus.	consensus grammar	D.T. Max
9aa1cb4	Ils en conclurent que la syntaxe est une fantaisie et la grammaire une illusion.	phantasies syntax illusions language grammar	Gustave Flaubert
f747745	That's so typical. You won't steal a baby, but you're too lazy to conjugate.	humor grammar	Jim Butcher
54b2934	Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It's all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.	literature language grammar	Thomas C. Foster
b3e45ef	Diagramming made language seem friendly, like a dog who doesn't bark, but, instead, trots over to greet you, wagging its tail.	grammar	Kitty Burns Florey
3124ae9	Some may say that the British are obsessed with class difference and that knowing your apostrophes is a way of belittling the uneducated. To which accusation, I say (mainly), 'Pah!' How can it be a matter of class difference when ignorance is universal?	humor class-difference intellectualism ignorance grammar	Lynne Truss
5c122e7	"No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to "get a life" by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves."	grammar-nazi lynne-truss seventh-sense grammar	Lynne Truss
a5b1b38	Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with the upper classes. In Montana, however, it didn't have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass.	writing rules-of-english-language montana grammar	Robert M. Pirsig
39b71c7	"Cheers,' she said as I left, 'and don't forget you're seeing Matt and I on Monday.' I thought for a moment she'd said 'matineye', an East End pronunciation of 'matinee'. Was I meant to review it?	grammar	Sebastian Faulks

The greater part of the world's troubles are due to questions of grammar.

world humor misunderstandings problems troubles grammar

Michel de Montaigne

ff65dc7

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.

humour humor star-trek-references grammar-humor space-travel science-fiction grammar

Douglas Adams

19bd5dc

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.

immortality grammar

Margaret Atwood

43f12b8

The rule is: don't use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.

grammar stupid

Lynne Truss

aa216ac

I have no idea what that is, but yawn, anyway, just on principle. Eat up. Pancakes is brain food. Apparently not grammar food. Wow.You college girls are mean.

eve-rosser claire-danvers grammar

Rachel Caine

3d56c1d

Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Misplace a single or and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge.

words syntax language grammar

Douglas Coupland

6ca4234

What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

humor lynne-truss sentence-structure english-language punctuation grammar

Lynne Truss

e71031e

"Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word "punctilious" ("attentive to formality or etiquette") comes from the same original root as punctuation."

punctuation manners grammar

Lynne Truss

d40ef1c

Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.

syllable vowels maniac grammar

Jerry Spinelli

e1cec5e

We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world--indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states--the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities.

reading humanism language grammar

Peter Sloterdijk

65f8f12

"Stupid English." "English isn't stupid," I say. "Well, my English teacher is." He makes a face. "Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me." "Why not?" "He says lunch isn't a subject."

humor grammar school

Jodi Picoult

89bafc1

Don't cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn't mean to write, leave it.) Don't worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don't even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.) Lose control. Don't think. Don't get logical. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)

margin punctuation line spelling grammar

Natalie Goldberg

8415864

Grammar, he saw, was agreement, community, consensus.

consensus grammar

D.T. Max

9aa1cb4

Ils en conclurent que la syntaxe est une fantaisie et la grammaire une illusion.

phantasies syntax illusions language grammar

Gustave Flaubert

f747745

That's so typical. You won't steal a baby, but you're too lazy to conjugate.

humor grammar

Jim Butcher

54b2934

Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It's all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.

literature language grammar

Thomas C. Foster

b3e45ef

Diagramming made language seem friendly, like a dog who doesn't bark, but, instead, trots over to greet you, wagging its tail.

grammar

Kitty Burns Florey

3124ae9

Some may say that the British are obsessed with class difference and that knowing your apostrophes is a way of belittling the uneducated. To which accusation, I say (mainly), 'Pah!' How can it be a matter of class difference when ignorance is universal?

humor class-difference intellectualism ignorance grammar

Lynne Truss

5c122e7

"No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to "get a life" by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves."

grammar-nazi lynne-truss seventh-sense grammar

Lynne Truss

a5b1b38

Correct spelling, correct punctuation, correct grammar. Hundreds of rules for itsy-bitsy people. No one could remember all that stuff and concentrate on what he was trying to write about. It was all table manners, not derived from any sense of kindness or decency or humanity, but originally from an egotistic desire to look like gentlemen and ladies. Gentlemen and ladies had good table manners and spoke and wrote grammatically. It was what identified one with the upper classes. In Montana, however, it didn't have this effect at all. It identified one, instead, as a stuck-up Eastern ass.

writing rules-of-english-language montana grammar

Robert M. Pirsig

39b71c7

"Cheers,' she said as I left, 'and don't forget you're seeing Matt and I on Monday.' I thought for a moment she'd said 'matineye', an East End pronunciation of 'matinee'. Was I meant to review it?

grammar

Sebastian Faulks