#gramma

The past is always tense, the future perfect. ↗

— Zadie Smith

#grammar #language #past #past

What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles, that it's very hard for abstract nouns to surrender. ↗

— Terry Jones

#bushism #grammar #politics #terrorism #terrorism

I don't know the rules of grammar. If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language. ↗

— David Ogilvy

#grammar #humour #advertising

In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs’ attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives’ attitudes about contemporary culture. We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs’ importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT’s cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people’s English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails: We are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#grammar #snoot #attitude

The whispers of shared ecstasy are choral. ↗

— George Steiner

#ecstasy #whisper #grammar

Going to a grammar school, you mixed with all sorts of different types and I used to listen to how they talked. When I did my imitations, I could sound like someone really rough, or I could sound like a cabinet minister. ↗

— Steve Coogan

#could #did #different #different types #going

Nearly all monster stories depend for their success on Jack killing the Giant, Beowulf or St. George slaying the Dragon, Harry Potter triumphing over the basilisk. That is their inner grammar, and the whole shape of the story leads towards it. ↗

— A. N. Wilson

#dragon #george #giant #grammar #harry

Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness! ↗

— Roald Dahl

#mathematics

The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it. ↗

— Lynne Truss

#grammar #stupid #tolerance

It's hard to take someone seriously when they leave you a note saying, 'Your ugly.' My ugly what? The idiot didn't even know the difference between your and you're. ↗

— Cara Lynn Shultz

#grammar