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b916034
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intelligence nowadays is all about application: it is the ability 'to take in a complex system and learn its rules on the fly'. For young people, this ability is second nature. Any fool knows that, if you need a new and unfamiliar VCR programmed in a hurry, you commandeer any small passing child to do it.
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technology
youth
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Lynne Truss |
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1989503
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there used to be a shopkeeper in Bristol who deliberately stuck ungrammatical signs in his window as a ruse to draw people into the shop; they would come in to complain, and he would then talk them into buying something.
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Lynne Truss |
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88d784e
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Clicking on "send" has its limitations as a system of subtle communication. Which is why, of course, people use so many dashes and italics and capitals ("I AM joking!") to compensate. That's why they came up with the emoticon, too--the emoticon being the greatest (or most desperate, depending how you look at it) advance in punctuation since the question mark in the reign of Charlemagne. You will know all about emoticons. Emoticons are the p..
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humour
internet-usage
punctuation
writing
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Lynne Truss |
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bac357c
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we are unattractive know-all obsessives who get things out of proportion and are in continual peril of being disowned by our exasperated families.
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Lynne Truss |
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ddfd68c
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Using the comma well announces that you have an ear for sense and rhythm, confidence in your style and a proper respect for your reader,
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Lynne Truss |
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830fdbc
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All the important roles shortly boiled down to one: remember your with other people; show some consideration.
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consideration
manners
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Lynne Truss |
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cbb7746
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The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.
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Lynne Truss |
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ff2309c
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Those spineless types who talk about abolishing the apostrophe are missing the point.
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Lynne Truss |
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ab3f440
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On the page, punctuation performs its grammatical function, but in the mind of the reader it does more than that. It tells the reader how to hum the tune.
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Lynne Truss |
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95aa897
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the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: "For every apostrophe omitted from an it's, there is an extra one put into an its." Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant, even if this means we have double the reason to go and bang our heads against a wall." --
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Lynne Truss |
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6ce14d9
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Yes, you can see the bullet points here, here and here, sir; there are multiple back-slashes, of course. And that's a forward slash. I would have to call this a frenzied attack. Did anyone hear the interrobang?" "Oh yes. Woman next door was temporarily deafened by it. What's this?" "Ah. You don't see many of these any more. It's an emoticon. Hold your head this way and it appears to be winking." "Good God! You mean - ?" "That's the mout..
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murder-mystery
path-lab
punctuation
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Lynne Truss |
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13ac61b
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Inverted commas (or speech marks, or quotes) are sometimes used by fastidious writers as a kind of linguistic rubber glove, distancing them from vulgar words or cliches they are too refined to use in the normal way. This 'N' character in Iris Murdoch's novel evidently can't bring himself to say 'keep in touch' without sealing it hygienically within inverted commas, and doubtless additionally indicating his irony with two pairs of curled fin..
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Lynne Truss |
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bb78fbe
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No valentines from the cats again.
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Lynne Truss |
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09b9ae9
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If there is one lesson to be learned from this book, it is that there is never a dull moment in the world of punctuation.
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Lynne Truss |
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a30efb4
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I have been told that the dying words of one famous 20th-century writer were, "I should have used fewer semicolons" - and although I have spent months fruitlessly trying to track down the chap responsible, I believe it none the less. If it turns out that no one actually did say this on their deathbed, I shall certainly save it up for my own."
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Lynne Truss |
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2be9004
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it usually aspiring gangsta rappers who set such store by designer labels?
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Lynne Truss |
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d4aa667
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the American essayist Lewis Thomas on the semicolon: The semicolon tells you that there is still some question about the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added [ . . .] The period [or full stop] tells you that that is that; if you didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to parcel out and now you have to move along. But with the semicolon there you get a pleasant feeling of expe..
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Lynne Truss |
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d6ac7fe
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Remember that thing Truman Capote said years ago about Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, it's typing"? I keep thinking that what we do now, with this medium of instant delivery, isn't writing, and doesn't even qualify as typing either: it's just sending."
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Lynne Truss |
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4114bea
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Punctuation is no more a class issue than the air we breathe.
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Lynne Truss |
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e91ecd9
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Jessie had never heard you could inherit madness. She thought madness was something that just happened to people in Shakespeare when the wind got up.
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Lynne Truss |
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3a65929
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As with other paired bracketing devices (such as parentheses, dashes and quotation marks), there is actual mental cruelty involved , incidentally, in opening up a pair of commas and then neglecting to deliver the closing one. The reader hears the first shoe drop and then strains in agony to hear the second. In dramatic terms, it's like putting a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I and then having the heroine drown herself quietly offstage in th..
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Lynne Truss |
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c828b53
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the Law of Conservation of Apostrophes. A heresy since the 13th century, this law states that a balance exists in nature: "For every apostrophe omitted from an it's, there is an extra one put into an its." Thus the number of apostrophes in circulation remains constant,"
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Lynne Truss |
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1c2f5e2
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one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burnout from all the thankless effort.
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Lynne Truss |
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c6582ce
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Oh yes, sir. There's no doubt about it, sir. The Punctuation Murderer has struck again.
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Lynne Truss |
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3a1ac37
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by tragic historical coincidence a period of abysmal under-educating in literacy has coincided with this unexpected explosion of global self-publishing. Thus people who don't know their apostrophe from their elbow are positively invited to disseminate their writings to anyone on the planet stupid enough to double-click and scroll.
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Lynne Truss |
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91e5a45
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I think about death sometimes. Analytically, of course.
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Lynne Truss |
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6f2fb51
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you know those self-help books that give you permission to love yourself? This one gives you permission to love punctuation.
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Lynne Truss |
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acc1e20
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Cruelty to punctuation is quite unlegislated: you can get away with pulling the legs off semicolons; shrivelling question marks on the garden path under a powerful magnifying glass; you name it.
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Lynne Truss |
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0be3444
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While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else - yet we see it .
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punctuation
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Lynne Truss |
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004ff84
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So what happened to the comma in this process? Well, between the 16th century and the present day, it became a kind of scary grammatical sheepdog. As we shall shortly see, the comma has so many jobs as a "separator" (punctuation marks are traditionally either "separators" or "terminators") that it tears about on the hillside of language, endlessly organising words into sensible groups and making them stay put: sorting and dividing; circling..
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Lynne Truss |
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78c4424
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She was one of those invalids who has to lie down a lot, and sometimes can't lift a bread knife, but can shift a mahogany wardrobe if the fancy is upon her to see it in a different place.
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Lynne Truss |
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61d17b5
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For the first time since she met him, she asked herself whether mr Dodgson was really the sunny personality she had at first imagined. Did she honestly want to spend the rest of her life with him, setting up home in a bathing machine, and living on what she could catch in a shrimp net? She pulled a face, stood up, brushed her frock. She was only eight, she told herself. As Jessie Fowler had pointed out this afternoon, a girl of eight needn'..
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Lynne Truss |
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5c122e7
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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."
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grammar
grammar-nazi
lynne-truss
seventh-sense
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Lynne Truss |
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c1843f7
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semicolons are dangerously habit-forming. Many writers hooked on semicolons become an embarrassment to their families and friends.
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Lynne Truss |
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7446174
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Punctuation has been defined many ways. Some grammarians use the analogy of stitching: punctuation as the basting that holds the fabric of language in shape. Another writer tells us that punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop. I have even seen a rather fanciful reference to the full stop and comma as "the invisible servants in fairy tales - the ones who bring gl..
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Lynne Truss |
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5674831
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I'm sure people did question whether Italian printers were quite the right people to legislate on the meaning of everything; but on the other hand, resistance was obviously useless against a family that could invent italics.
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Lynne Truss |
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933f9a4
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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.
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Lynne Truss |
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499971f
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Joseph Robertson wrote in an essay on punctuation in 1785, "The art of punctuation is of infinite consequence in writing; as it contributes to the perspicuity, and consequently to the beauty, of every composition."
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Lynne Truss |
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d2669d1
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If colons and semicolons give themselves airs and graces, at least they also confer airs and graces that the language would be lost without.
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Lynne Truss |
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46ed33b
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humorous writing, the exclamation mark is the equivalent of canned laughter (F. Scott Fitzgerald - that well-known knockabout gag-man - said it was like laughing at your own jokes),
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Lynne Truss |
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5587ce2
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pretentious and over-active" semicolons have reached epidemic proportions in the world of academe, where they are used to gloss over imprecise thought."
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Lynne Truss |
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63c97b8
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No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked uo on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave."
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Lynne Truss |
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e77e3cb
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Writers jealous of their individual style are obliged to wring the utmost effect from a tiny range of marks - which explains why they get so desperate when their choices are challenged (or corrected) by copy-editors legislating according to a "house style"."
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Lynne Truss |
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fa7daeb
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So the particular strengths of the colon are beginning to become clear. A colon is nearly always preceded by a complete sentence, and in its simplest usage it rather theatrically announces what is to come. Like a well-trained magician's assistant, it pauses slightly to give you time to get a bit worried, and then efficiently whisks away the cloth and reveals the trick complete.
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colon-usage
colon-use
colons
magic-trick
magic-tricks
punctuation
punctuation-metaphor
sentence
sentences
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Lynne Truss |