#gramma

People of very different opinions--friends who can discuss politics, religion, and sex with perfect civility--are often reduced to red-faced rage when the topic of conversation is the serial comma or an expression like more unique. People who merely roll their eyes at hate crimes feel compelled to write jeremiads on declining standards when a newspaper uses the wrong form of its. Challenge my most cherished beliefs about the place of humankind in God's creation, and while I may not agree with you, I'll fight to the death for your right to say it. But dangle a participle in my presence, and I'll consider you a subliterate cretin no longer worth listening to, a menace to decent society who should be removed from the gene pool before you do any more damage. ↗

— Jack Lynch

#language #misuse #ungrammatical #death

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy. ↗

— Dorothy Parker

#authors #elements-of-style #favors #grammar #happiness

The night is falling down around us. Meteors rain like fireworks, quick rips in the seam of the dark... Every second, another streak of silver glows: parentheses, exclamation points, commas - a whole grammar made of light, for words too hard to speak. ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#grammar

People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else. ↗

— B.R. Myers

#grammar #language #grammar

This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#grammar

Perhaps the window is not a sun but an asterisk, interrupting the grammar of the sky, with me sitting below it like a footnote. ↗

— China Miéville

#grammar

Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing. ↗

— John H. McWhorter

#grammar

The English language is a work in progress. Have fun with it. ↗

— Jonathan Culver

#grammar #language #grammar

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail. ↗

— Ben Marcus

#language #spelling #grammar

I got into trouble a while ago for saying that I thought the internet led to increased literacy - people scolded me about the shocking grammar to be found online - but I was talking about fundamentals: quite simply, you can't use the net unless you can read. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#ago #found #fundamentals #got #grammar