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3124ae9
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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?
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class-difference
grammar
humor
ignorance
intellectualism
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Lynne Truss |
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2c6e9d7
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nothing is straightforward in the world of literary taste.
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Lynne Truss |
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ae077d1
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The rule is: the word "it's" (with apostrophe) stands for "it is" or "it has". If the word does not stand for "it is" or "it has" then what you require is "its". This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. 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,..
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Lynne Truss |
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a2355c1
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In fact, it seemed to me that every single item on the news - concerning economic doom and political hypocrisy and social breakdown - was not "news" at all. What I could hear was just a series of utterly transparent ploys to frighten and alarm the listeners - and frighten them, moreover, about the wrong things. The" --
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Lynne Truss |
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7156cb2
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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"
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Lynne Truss |
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69ab0b9
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As we shall see, the tractable apostrophe has always done its proper jobs in our language with enthusiasm and elegance, but it has never been taken seriously enough; its talent for adaptability has been cruelly taken for granted; and now, in an age of supreme graphic frivolity, we pay the price.
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Lynne Truss |
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385bac5
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Although I would appreciate it if you tried not to sound so bloody sarcastic. Beelzebub himself ticked me off the other day for not getting the proper respect from you blasted cats. He came all the way from Pandemonium because he found out that the Captain had started calling me "mate." I said to him: it's a different world nowadays, Beelzebub. It's not as respectful as it used to be. People on mobile phones; people cycling on the pavement;..
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Lynne Truss |
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8be5b70
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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.
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Lynne Truss |
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459f1a3
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In Beachcomber's hilarious columns about the Apostropher Royal in The Express, a certain perversely comforting law is often reiterated: 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 ..
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Lynne Truss |
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6b489b9
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Come inside," it says, "for CD's, VIDEO's, DVD's, and BOOK's."
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Lynne Truss |
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adadc2e
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In her autobiographical Giving Up the Ghost (2003), Hilary Mantel reveals: "I have always been addicted to something or other, usually something there's no support group for. Semicolons, for instance, I can never give up for more than two hundred words at a time."
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Lynne Truss |
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7773854
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The American writer Donald Barthelme wrote that the semicolon is "ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog's belly"."
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Lynne Truss |
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cce8a49
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Once someone has shown you a convincingly different way of looking at the world, it's hard to remember how you saw it before.
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Lynne Truss |
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0168210
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fulcrum
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Lynne Truss |
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446230a
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There is even a rather delightful publication for children called "The Punctuation Repair Kit", which takes the line "Hey! It's uncool to be stupid!" - which is a lie, of course, but you have to admire them for trying."
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Lynne Truss |
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1d7125c
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L'insulto e l'arma del debole.
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Lynne Truss |
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1c2da2c
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We read privately, mentally listening to the writer's voice and translating the writer's thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Havi..
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reading
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Lynne Truss |