Grammar Punctuation Quotes & Sayings

Ladies, if you want to know the way to my heart ... good spelling and good grammar, good punctuation, capitalize only where you are supposed to capitalize, it's done. — John Mayer

I never got into this business thinking I'd be like a movie star. — Glenn Close

I am in awe of Sam's decision to abandon capitals and punctuation but am not brave enough to do the same. I like to imagine the day he, as the Americans say, made the change he wished to see in the world. I like to think it came to him suddenly. Perhaps he was swimming - no, too active - or napping indoors on a hot day - no, too bourgeois - probably he was in Scotland during the midge season and he left the desk lamp on and the window open when he went out for a meaningful walk. It was dark and the midges were drawn to the lamplight and - thinking it was the moon - fried themselves against the bulb, falling in their tens and tens, cooked on the pages of Sam's poems. So when he returned some time later, with bites on his neck, he found his poems loaded with punctuation, asterisks, grammar lying dead on his manuscript and his instant reaction was disgust, a feeling that then infected his whole aesthetic. — Joe Dunthorne

What do you mean 'speaking of fairy tales'? Since when do fairy tales include gigolos?" Annie asked.
"Well, since most fairy-tale princes are either gay or weirdly attached to their mommies, I think Walt Disney should seriously consider their inclusion," Sophie answered. — Elle Aycart

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

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences. — Terry Pratchett

Life is tons of discipline. Your first discipline is your vocabulary; then your grammar and your punctuation — Robert Frost

She [the wife of godly character] brings him [her husband] good, not harm, all the days of her life (Proverbs 31:12). Wait a minute! My mind raced. All the days of her life? What was that supposed to mean? I had yet to meet any woman who had been married all the days of her life. Did this verse mean that she tried to do her husband good ... even before she met him? — Leslie Ludy

I think it's very important that we protect marriage as an institution between a man and a woman. I proposed a constitutional amendment. The reason I did so was because I was worried that activist judges are actually defining the definition of marriage. And the surest way to protect marriage between a man and woman is to amend the Constitution. — George W. Bush

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. — Lynne Truss

I write in the most distressingly slow way in terms of punctuation and grammar. — Maurice Saatchi

Hey Kid
so proud of you. so is emily. we wish we could be there, but here's a fat check to make up for it but dont go spending it all out on booze. call you soon.
Love, the best big brother ever
and Emily and Marie, too.
I smiled. It was a mark of how much I loved my big brother that I found his lack of punctuation and proper grammar endearing. — Kody Keplinger

Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop. — Lynne Truss

Even if you can't see the whole road ahead, you can ask for the one step that will lead you forward. — Catherine Carrigan

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

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. — Robert M. Pirsig

In France, we leave a single space before and after most punctuation marks. In England, there are generally no spaces before punctuation, and one inserts a double space between sentences. — Tasha Alexander

In this chthonian world the only thing of importance is orthography and punctuation. It doesn't matter what the nature of the calamity is, only whether it is spelled right. — Henry Miller

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

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? — Lynne Truss

Use correct grammar and punctuation. Do not use net speak, like WOT, W-O-T or U. Those messages get a lot lower reply rate. — Christian Rudder

What I had thought were signs of a broken educational system - the seemingly random placement of commas, the spastic syntax, the obnoxious overuse of quotation marks, the goofy misspelling of 'Jouralism' - were actually signs of the New Instantaneousness. 'Instant Jouralists' cannot be concerned with punctuation and grammar and spelling. That stuff just 'slows you down.' To be an 'Instant Jouralist,' you have to write as if you were being pursued by a cheetah across the Serengeti. — Nicholas G. Carr

Apparently, my hopes, dreams and aspirations were no match against my poor spelling, punctuation and grammar. — Red Red Rover

You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better. — Courage Knight

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

Writing is not about how well you can write the next "Great American Novel," using flawless grammar and snooty punctuation; sometimes, it's only about making someone smile, or laugh out loud. Sometimes, its sharing a fun thought, or putting a vivid life experience on paper so others' can share a great moment that had an impact on you, the author. — T. Hammond

No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear. — Andy Rooney

People seem to be getting dumber and dumber. You know, I mean we have all this amazing technology and yet computers have turned into basically four figure wank machines. The internet was supposed to set us free, democratize us, but all it's really given us is Howard Dean's aborted candidacy and 24 hour a day access to kiddie porn. 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 at a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King's English. — Hank Moody

It is really important that focusing on things such as spelling, punctuation, grammar and handwriting doesn't inhibit the creative flow. When I was at school there was a huge focus on copying and testing and it put me off words and stories for years. — Michael Morpurgo

I don't think anyone would think that an ellipsis represents doubt or anything. I think it's more, you know, hinting at the future. What lies ahead. — Sarah Dessen

You see, I believe that you cannot be taught to 'write.' You can be taught grammar and punctuation, but you cannot be taught to be a writer. That has to come from within. — Robert J. Randisi