Punctuation Quotes - Page 4

• Most people have no idea how much goes into designing a typeface. Twenty-six letters in the alphabet, usually with two versions of each, upper and lower case. Punctuation and alternate characters and numbers - let's not forget numbers - can add another 40 or so.

  Michael Bierut

  Character, Ideas, Two

  Source: scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

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• Maximum sentence length: seventeen words. Minimum:one No semicolons. Semicolons indicate relationships that only idiots need defined by punctuation. Besides, they are ugly. Make sure each sentence is at least four words longer or shorter than the one before it.

  Richard Hugo

  Needs, Four, Ugly

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• It should come as no surprise that writers take an interest in punctuation. 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.

  Lynne Truss

  Believe, Should Have, Track

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• Lexical variety, eccentric constructions and punctuation, variant spellings, archaisms, the ability to pile clause on clause, the effortless incorporation of words from other languages: flexibility, and inclusiveness, is what makes English great; and diversity is what keeps it healthy and growing, exuberantly regenerating itself with rich new forms and usages.

  Donna Tartt

  Diversity, Healthy, Growing

  Interview with Michael Pietsch, www.slate.com. October 11, 2013.

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• We never let go. Ever. Even with punctuation. It's frightening. I can't see anyone from any record company ever writing an email to Neil and not getting it back, with corrections.

  Chris Lowe

  Letting Go, Writing, Scary

  "The Pet Shop Boys' Commandments". Interview with Miranda Sawyer, www.theguardian.com. October 19, 2003.

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• In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He’ll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can’t figure out whether the hero’s laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff—a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I’m not lazy, whatever else I am. I’ll tell you everything.

  Jim Thompson

  Girl, Running, Jobs

  Jim Thompson (1997). “Crime novels: American noir of the 1950s”

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• Everyone suffers; life is pain; and death is the final punctuation at the end of that sentence, so deal with it. I really think you can manage pain and suffering by living in fullness and being true to yourself and all those seemingly vapid platitudes.

  Sufjan Stevens

  Pain, Thinking, Suffering

  "True Myth: A Conversation With Sufjan Stevens". Interview with Ryan Dombal, pitchfork.com. February 16, 2015.

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• One of the things I like about my job is that it draws on the entire person: not just your knowledge of grammar and punctuation and usage and foreign languages and literature but also your experience of travel, gardening, shipping, singing, plumbing, Catholicism, midwesternism, mozzarella, the A train, New Jersey. And in turn it feeds you more experience.

  Mary Norris

  Jobs, Singing, Gardening

  Mary Norris (2015). “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Punctuation is a deeply conservative club. It hardly ever admits a new member.

  Mary Norris

  Clubs, Conservative, Members

  Mary Norris (2015). “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen”, p.113, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I do not worry or even think of spelling, grammar, paragraphing, or punctuation (except periods) at this point. . .In the early throes of an idea there is for me only grammar of the mind, which is a flow of thought, as natural and precise as the flow of a river to the sea.

  Mary O'Neill

  Thinking, Sea, Ideas

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• Our kiss was niticlimactic. It wasn't that the kiss was bad, but it was just a note of punctuation in our long conversation, a parenthetical remark made in order to assure each other of a deeply felt agreement, a mutual offer of companionship, which is so much more rare than sexual passion or even love.

  Nicole Krauss

  Passion, Kissing, Agreement

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• The person you are (in total, at that moment in time) is what creates the story you're writing. It's infused in every piece of punctuation, in the plot, in the most minor character who crosses the page. It's all your voice.

  Victor LaValle

  Writing, Character, Voice

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• People… they don’t write anymore – they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.

  David Duchovny

  Kings, Stupid, Writing

  "Fictional character: Hank Moody". Californication (TV Series), www.imdb.com. 2007.

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• It is the relentless onward march of the texters, the SMS (Short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Genghis Khan did to his neighbours 800 years ago. They are destroying it: pillaging our punctuation; savaging our sentences; raping our vocabulary. And they must be stopped.

  John Humphrys

  Vocabulary, Years, Sms

  "I h8 txt msgs: How texting is wrecking our language" by John Humphrys, www.dailymail.co.uk. September 24, 2007.

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• They still believe in God, the family, angels, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other obsolete stuff.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Believe, Angel, Stuff

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• Every time I write these words they become a taboo,
  Making sure my punctuation curve, every letter here's true,
  Living my life in the margin, and that metaphor was proof.

  Kendrick Lamar

  Rap, Writing, Curves

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• Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation Then, in your exuberance and bounding energy you say you're going to add to that. Then you add rhyme and meter. And your delight is in that power.

  Robert Frost

  Vocabulary, Discipline, Delight

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• Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.

  Abbas Kiarostami

  People, Lazy, Cinema

  "Cannes 2012: Abbas Kiarostami: 'The world is my workshop'". Interview with Xan Brooks, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2012.

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• The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

  Lynne Truss

  Vapour, Way, Reason

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, www.today.com. November 6, 2013.

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• RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.

  Ben Marcus

  Wise, Art, Pain

  Ben Marcus (2013). “The Age of Wire and String”, p.92, Granta Books

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• From the reader's point of view, punctuation provides a map for one who must otherwise drive blindly past the by-ways, intersections, and detours of a writer's thought.

  Mina P. Shaughnessy

  Writing, Past, Views

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• I might not use capital letters. But I would definitely use an apostrophe…and probably a period. I’m a huge fan of punctuation.

  Rainbow Rowell

  Fans, Use, Letters

  Rainbow Rowell (2016). “The Rainbow Rowell YA Collection”, p.158, St. Martin's Griffin

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• Every ending is arbitrary, because the end is where you write The end. A period, a dot of punctuation, a point of stasis. A pinprick in the paper: you could put your eye to it and see through, to the other side, to the beginning of something else. Or, as Tony says to her students, Time is not a solid, like wood, but a fluid, like water or the wind. It doesn't come neatly cut into even-sized length, into decades and centuries. Nevertheless, for our purposes we have to pretend it does. The end of any history is a lie in which we all agree to conspire.

  Margaret Atwood

  Lying, Eye, Writing

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• The key to a successful relationship isn’t just in the words, it’s in the choice of punctuation. When you’re in love with someone, a well-placed question mark can be the difference between bliss and disaster, and a deeply respected period or a cleverly inserted ellipsis can prevent all kinds of exclamations.

  David Levithan

  Successful, Keys, Differences

  "The Lover's Dictionary". Book by David Levithan, www.sfgate.com. 2010.

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• I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.

  Isaac Marion

  Exclamation Marks, Punctuation Marks, Long

  Isaac Marion (2012). “Warm Bodies: A Novel”, p.51, Simon and Schuster

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