Punctuation Quotes

• Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile.

  Julie Burchill

  Love, Sympathy, Death

  "The New Encyclopedia of Christian Quotations". Book by Mark Water, p. 111, 2000.

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

  Lynne Truss

  Punctuation Marks, Detours, Language

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, November 6, 2003.

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• Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

  Lynne Truss

  Stories, Helping, Courtesy

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• The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Anniversary, Doors, Want

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1974). “Locked rooms and open doors”, Not Avail

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• In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict, because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words we are continually changing the score.

  Ralph Richardson

  Bars, Score, Strict

  "Tynan on Richardson". The Observer Magazine, December 18, 1977.

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• But still, it looked completely natural, as if we had been kissing at the ends of sentences for ages, while the rest of the world was still hung up on punctuation.

  Jodi Picoult

  Kissing, Age, World

  Jodi Picoult (2008). “Change of Heart: A Novel”, p.373, Simon and Schuster

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• The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Sarcasm, Misunderstood, Want

  Edgar Allan Poe (2014). “Complete Collection of Edgar Allan Poe - 170+ eBooks (Complete Tales, Poems, Novels, Essays, Miscellaneous, Play)”, p.1206, Ageless Reads

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

  Terry Pratchett

  Writing, Wonderful, Grammar

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• There are 500 reasons I write for children.... Children read books, not reviews. They don't give a hoot about the critics.... They don't read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.... They don't expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that it is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Children, Book, Believe

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• We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.

  Lynne Truss

  Thinking, Intellectual, Degrees

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• 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

  Heart, Done, Want

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

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• 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

  Educational, Writing, Broken

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• Why, if there is alphabet soup, do we not have punctuation cereal?

  Mary Norris

  Cereal, Soup, Alphabet

  Mary Norris (2015). “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen”, p.81, W. W. Norton & Company

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• It (the dash ) is a comfortable punctuation mark since even the most rigorous critic can seldom claim that any particular example of it is a misuse. Its overuse is its greatest danger, and the writer who can't resist dashes may be suspected of uncoordinated thinking.

  Bergen Evans

  Writing, Thinking, Punctuation Marks

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• With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have a great respect for the semicolin; it's a useful little chap

  Abraham Lincoln

  People, Feelings, Littles

  Abraham Lincoln (1982). “Abraham Lincoln, wisdom & wit”, Peter Pauper Pr

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• The reason it's worth standing up for punctuation is not that it's an arbitrary system of notation known only to an over-sensitive elite who have attacks of the vapours when they see it misapplied. The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

  Lynne Truss

  Arbitrary, Vapour, Way

  "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation". Book by Lynne Truss, November 6, 2003.

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• As someone who sends texts messages more or less non-stop, I enjoy one particular aspect of texting more than anything else: that it is possible to sit in a crowded railway carriage laboriously spelling out quite long words in full, and using an enormous amount of punctuation, without anyone being aware of how outrageously subversive I am being.

  Lynne Truss

  Long, Messages, Texting

  "The joy of text" by Will Self, Lynne Truss, www.theguardian.com. July 4, 2008.

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• smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence of a day on the road.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Punctuation Marks, Long, Smoking

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2012). “Thank You for the Light”, p.4, Simon and Schuster

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• I recently heard of someone studying the ellipsis (or three dots) for a PhD. And, I have to say, I was horrified. The ellipsis is the black hole of the punctuation universe, surely, into which no right-minded person would willingly be sucked, for three years, with no guarantee of a job at the end.

  Lynne Truss

  Jobs, Years, Black

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• I’ve always been a word guy, I like weird words and I like American slang and all that and words that are no longer being used… I like to drag them out of the box and wave them around… this is an interesting one, it’s amazing how in addition to punctuation just a little pause in the wrong place can just completely transform the meaning of something.

  Tom Waits

  Interesting, Guy, Littles

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• To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

  Lynne Truss

  Friday, Writing, Average

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• 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

  Use, Messages, Speak

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• We think that it's the big moments that define our lives-the wedding, the baby, the new house, the dream job. But really, these big moments of happiness are just the punctuation marks of our personal sagas. The narrative is written every day in the small, the simple, and the common. In your tiny choices, in these tiny changes. In the unconsidered. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Happiness, Dream, Baby

  Sarah Ban Breathnach (1999). “Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self”, G K Hall & Company

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• Mr. Speaker. I said the honorable member was a liar it is true and I am sorry for it. The honorable member may place the punctuation where he pleases.

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Funny, Sorry, Liars

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• 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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