Punctuation Quotes - Page 2

• If the semicolon is one of the neglected children in the family of punctuation marks these days, told to stay in its room and entertain itself, because mummy and daddy are busy, the apostrophe is the abused victim.

  John Humphrys

  Children, Punctuation Marks, Daddy

  "The end of the line?" by Jon Henley, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2008.

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• In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

  Lynne Truss

  Brother, Hands, Exclamation Marks

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• We have one of those conversations where every thing clicks, meshes, corresponds, locks, where even our pauses, even our punctuation marks, seem to be nodding in agreement.

  Nick Hornby

  Agreement, Punctuation Marks, Locks

  Nick Hornby (1996). “High Fidelity”, p.128, Penguin

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• Yeah? Okay," she said, staring up into the stars. "Let's see. You know how, at the end of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet wakes up in the crypt and Romeo's already dead? He thought she was dead so he killed himself right next to her?" "Yeah. That was awesome." A pause, followed by "Ow," suggested elbow punctuation on the part of Mik. Karou ignored it. "Well, imagine if she woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But he had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.

  Laini Taylor

  Stars, Cities, Voice

  Laini Taylor (2015). “The Complete Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.534, Hachette UK

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• > CracKing: No need to yell. > FtLouie: I’m not yelling!!! > CracKing: You’re using excessive amounts of punctuation, and on-line, that’s like yelling.

  Meg Cabot

  Yelling, Needs, Lines

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• We are at a punctuation point in human history where the Industrial Age and institutions have finally come to their logical conclusion. They have essentially run out of gas.

  Don Tapscott

  Running, Age, Logical

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• Learn punctuation; it is your little drum set, one of the few tools oyu have to signal the reader where the beats and emphases go. (If you get it wrong, any least thing, the editor will throw your manuscript out.) Punctuation is not like musical notation; it doesn't indicate the length of pauses, but instead signifies logical relations. There are all sorts of people out there who know these things very well. You have to be among them even to begin.

  Annie Dillard

  Editors, People, Musical

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• My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Attitude, Golf, Games

  Ernest Hemingway, Carlos Baker (2003). “Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961”, p.161, Simon and Schuster

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• Punctuation is a fabulous tool for controlling your reader - you even get to control where they breathe. That's what I call power!

  Nicola Morgan

  Writing, Tools, Fabulous

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• And if you want to know why great editors scare the pants off of writers everywhere, read 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. The punctuation police are everywhere!

  Dorothea Benton Frank

  Editors, Police, Scare

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• I still put punctuation in my texts. If it's an 'I', I make sure it's a capital.

  Simon Cowell

  Stills, Ifs

  "Simon Cowell: Simon says". Interview with Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2011.

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• Celebrity is absolutely preposterous. Entertainment seems to be inflating. It used to be the punctuation to your life, a film or a novel or a play, a way of celebrating a good week or month. Now it feels as if it's all punctuation.

  Hugh Laurie

  Play, Way, Months

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I am very aware that playwrights, particularly good ones, have a intention for everything they write. Language and punctuation is used specifically, and most of the time actors can find wonderful clues about character in the rhythm and cadence of the language used.

  Laura Linney

  Character, Writing, Cadence

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• My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

  Billy Wilder

  Aunt, Pay, Punctuality

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• Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

  George Will

  Football, Inspiration, Nfl

  International Herald Tribune, May 07, 1990.

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• Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

  Lynne Truss

  Men, Giving, Answers

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• A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Book, Eye, Eight

  Kurt Vonnegut (2011). “A Man Without a Country”, p.133, Seven Stories Press

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• Bin Laden's death is just a punctuation point on a set of problems they've had for a long time. I think the prognosis for al-Qaida and groups like it is really bad, and that's a good thing.

  Peter Bergen

  Thinking, Long, Groups

  "The 'Manhunt' To Capture Osama Bin Laden". "Fresh Air" with Dave Davies, www.npr.org. May 1, 2012.

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• Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.

  Lorrie Moore

  Real, Writing, Generalists

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• In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel.

  Werner Herzog

  Half, Dinosaurs, Faces

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• We all need something to help us unwind at the end of the day. You might have a glass of wine, or a joint, or a big delicious blob of heroin to silence your silly brainbox of its witterings but there has to be some form of punctuation, or life just seems utterly relentless.

  Russell Brand

  Weed, Silly, Wine

  Russell Brand (2009). “My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up”, p.7, Harper Collins

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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, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

  Lynne Truss

  Writing, Lightning, Doe

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• Punctuation, is? fun!

  Daniel Keyes

  Fun

  Daniel Keyes (2007). “Flowers for Algernon”, p.39, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Give a civil servant a good case and he'll wreck it with clichés, bad punctuation, double negatives, and convoluted apology.

  Alan Clark

  Work, Apology, Giving

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• From the gardener's point of view, November can be the worst month to be faced: Nature is winding things down, the air is cold, skies are gray, but usually the final mark of punctuation to the year as yet to arrive - the snow; snow that covers all in the garden and marks a mind-set for the end of a year's activity. There is little to do outside except to wait for longer days in the new year and the joys of coming holidays.

  H. Peter Loewer

  New Year, Holiday, Garden

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