Lynne Truss Quotes

Quotes about:

• A Panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes toward the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a Panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry, and, sure enough, finds an explanation. Panda. Large black and white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

  Lynne Truss

  Confused, Black And White, Gun

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

  92 Copy quote

• If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

  Lynne Truss

  Writing, Lightning, Good Food

  48 Copy quote

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

  Lynne Truss

  Stupid, Mean, Use

  50 Copy quote

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

  Lynne Truss

  Vapour, Way, Punctuation

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

  36 Copy quote

• 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.

  16 Copy quote

• In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

  Lynne Truss

  Brother, Hands, Exclamation Marks

  27 Copy quote

• Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.

  Lynne Truss

  Thinking, Causes, Punctuation

  15 Copy quote

• The rule is: the word 'it's' (with apostrophe) stands for 'it is' or 'it has'. If the word does not stand for 'it is' or 'it has' then what you require is 'its'. This is extremely easy to grasp. Getting your itses mixed up is the greatest solecism in the world of punctuation. No matter that you have a PhD and have read all of Henry James twice. If you still persist in writing, 'Good food at it's best', you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave.

  Lynne Truss

  Writing, Lightning, Doe

  20 Copy quote

• There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and those who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.

  Lynne Truss

  Taken, Oxford, People

  16 Copy quote

• 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.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

• Texting is a fundamentally sneaky form of communication, which we should despise, but it is such a boon we don't care. We are all sneaks now.

  Lynne Truss

  Communication, Care, Texting

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

  10 Copy quote

• The main advantage of working at home is that you get to find out what cats really do all day.

  Lynne Truss

  Home, Cat, Advantage

  4 Copy quote

• Manners are about imagination, ultimately. They are about imagining being the other person.

  Lynne Truss

  Imagination, Manners, Persons

  6 Copy quote

• Offence is so easily given. And where the 'minority' issue is involved, the rules seem to shift about: most of the time a person who is female/black/disabled/gay wants this not to be their defining characteristic; you are supposed to be blind to it. But then, on other occasions, you are supposed to observe special sensitivity, or show special respect.

  Lynne Truss

  Gay, Issues, Black

  8 Copy quote

• Texting is a supremely secretive medium of communication - it's like passing a note - and this means we should be very careful what we use it for.

  Lynne Truss

  Communication, Mean, Use

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

  10 Copy quote

• Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?

  Lynne Truss

  Wings, Protection, Militant

  Lynne Truss (2011). “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”, p.12, HarperCollins UK

  4 Copy quote

• We read privately, mentally listening to the author's voice and translating the writer's thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it.

  Lynne Truss

  Book, Journey, Voice

  8 Copy quote

• Many aspects of our screen-bound lives are bad for our social skills simply because we get accustomed to controlling the information that comes in, managing our relationships electronically, deleting stuff that doesn't interest us. We edit the world; we select from menus; we pick and choose; our social 'group' focuses on us and disintegrates without us. This makes it rather confusing for us when we step outdoors and discover that other people's behaviour can't be deleted with a simple one-stroke command or dragged to the trash icon.

  Lynne Truss

  Simple, Skills, Icons

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Drawing, Roots, Attention

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

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Giving, Answers

  8 Copy quote

• No one else understands us 7th sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes, we are often aggressively instructed to 'get a life' by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves.

  Lynne Truss

  Mistake, People, Freak

  Lynne Truss (2011). “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”, p.4, HarperCollins UK

  4 Copy quote

• Brackets come in various shapes, types and names: 1 round brackets (which we call brackets, and the Americans call parentheses) 2 square brackets [which we call square brackets, and the Americans call brackets]

  Lynne Truss

  Squares, Names, Shapes

  7 Copy quote

• What I have always liked about Brighton is its impersonality. Since the 18th century, people have come, used the place and gone home again.

  Lynne Truss

  Home, People, Gone

  6 Copy quote

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