Best 199 quotes in «grammar quotes» category

Although I don't use it nearly so much anymore, I've decided, five years down the line, that Mr. Treadstone's verdict on 'kind of' was kind of unjust. Obviously, this phrase can be redundant or reductive, or just plain stupid in some sentences, but not in all sentences. I wouldn't, for example, use a sentence like 'Antarctica is kind of cold', or 'Hitler was kind of evil'. But sometimes, things aren't black and white. And sometimes 'kind of' expresses this better than any other phrase. For example, when I tell you that my mother was kind of peculiar, I can think of no better way of putting this.

A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.

And the stains would never wash out. That's what Lukas was saying. She would always have hurt her father. Was that the way to phrase it? Always have had. It was immortal tense. A new rule of grammar.

An imperfect creative expression is much more sensible and creative than a grammatically perfect expression without an iota of sense and value in it.

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

Your grammar is a reflection of your image. Good or bad, you have made an impression. And like all impressions, you are in total control.

Being skilled in Catsism is like being a ninja only deadlier and not so silent. The only bad thing is the sickening grammar you have to use.

Grammar, n. A system of pitfalls thoughtfully prepared for the feet of the self-made man, along the path by which he advances to distinction.

But after the war, when editors like Martin Durk came to prominence by trumpeting the timely death of the novel, Parish opted for a reflective silence. He stopped taking on projects and watched with quiet reserve as his authors died off one by one--at peace with the notion that he would join them soon enough in that circle of Elysium reserved for plot and substance and the judicious use of the semicolon.

Books in the YA genre, in particular, should use proper grammar because they're more of an example to young people than adults books are.

But doesn't add something to what has come before; but takes something away. At its most daring, it can feel like a Bat Turn, a 180-degree spin int the Batmobile. Make that a But Turn.

Deleuze and Guattari have been totally misunderstood because the following has been wrenched from context: "Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of language is fundamentally political." (112) They are NOT advocating for this sort of prescriptive approach to language; rather, they are describing the social system around language--how language is a political tool. Why persist in quoting them as though they are promoting some sort of linguistic purity?

Cheers,' she said as I left, 'and don't forget you're seeing Matt and I on Monday.' I thought for a moment she'd said 'matineye', an East End pronunciation of 'matinee'. Was I meant to review it? Then I remembered Matt was the production editor. 'Me won't forget,' me muttered as me went downstairs.

Creoles tend to express variations in time by having a string of helping verbs rather than by having complicated word formation rules. In other words, they are more like English in this respect than like a language such as Italian: English: I thought she might have been sleeping. Italian: Pensavo che dormisse. The idea of potential (in the English "might"), completed or whole action (in the English "have"), and stretched-out activity (in the English "been") that go with "sleeping" are all expressed in the ending on the Italian verb dormisse. (Dorm is the root for "sleep"; isse is the ending that carries all the meaning about the time frame.)

Diagramming made language seem friendly, like a dog who doesn't bark, but, instead, trots over to greet you, wagging its tail.

Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Don't belittle people. If you're hung up on grammar & spelling read a book, not facebook. Honest expression is beautiful, mean comments are not.

Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.) Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.) Lose control. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)

Every language has a grammar, a set of rules that govern usage and meaning, and literary language is no different. It’s all more or less arbitrary of course, just like language itself.

Cynthia had been on friendly terms with an eccentric librarian called Porlock who in the last years of his dusty life had been engaged in examining old books for miraculous misprints such as the substitution of "1" for the second "h" in the word "hither." Contrary to Cynthia, he cared nothing for the thrill of obscure predictions; all he sought was the freak itself, the chance that mimics choice, the flaw that looks like a flower; and Cynthia, a much more perverse amateur of misshapen or illicitly connected words, puns, logogriphs, and so on, had helped the poor crank to pursue a quest that in the light of the example she cited struck me as statistically insane. ("The Vane Sisters")

Evolution did not design us to believe only true facts, nor to buy only useful products, nor to say only meaningful sentences

Expression of love does not need grammar.

Getting Pretty Panties Ripped Requires Real Damn Initiative. Or--general, personal, possessive, reflexive, reciprocal, relative, demonstrative, and interrogative!

Grammar and structure are speed breakers that impede thought.

- Excuse me, where is the library at? - At Harward we don't end the sentence with preposition - Excuse me, where is the library at, jerk!?

Grammar is the breathing power for the life of language

Grammarians make no new thoughts, but thoughts make new grammar.

Grammar is like your overarching compulsion. It’s math with words.

Grammar perfect books are for Ivy Leaguers in Ivory Towers. My book is a sandcastle built on the beach of usefullness.

Grammar শব্দটির সঠিক উচ্চারণ গ্রামার নয়, গ্র্যামার!

Grammar is like a strive for perfection. It's useless really.

Grammar to a writer is to a mountaineer a good pair of hiking boots or, more precisely, to a deep-sea diver an oxygen tank.

I actually intentially have poor spelling and grammar in my books. I feel that spelling and grammar shoudn't reflect inteltect. I beleive not everyone has the same recorses. Not everyone can aford to be taught the same grammar. Some people like me have learning dissabilites. Some people have dissorders or mental dissabilites. Some people never went to school. So when your judging someones writing, or reviewing, it. Please I ask of you this, don't take the grammar and spelling into acount. Because lets face it. Not everyone is as privleged as you.

How can you trust someone who doesn't bother to spell correctly or can't manage to lay out a simple declarative sentence?

I am reminded that while New Yorkers say "standing on line," the rest of the English-speaking world says "standing in line.

I am nothing if not misanthropic," declared Sebastian. "I think you mean philanthropic," said Henry. "God, you are so perdantic." "That would be pedantic." "See! You're even perdantic about the word perdantic.

I come from the sort of family in which, at the age of ten, I was told I must always say hoi polloi, never "the hoi polloi," because hoi meant "the," and two "the's" were redundant -- indeed something only hoi polloi would say.

I decided quickly that committing crimes against grammar was a hard limit for me.

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.

Each other refers to two nouns; one another refers to three or more, a distinction that careful writers generally observe.

I felt mildly peculiar to be treasuring love letters for their grammar, but there was nothing else I could treasure them for.

If Language is a Flower then without Grammar it will not smell.

If plain run is good enough for I, you, we, they, why isn't it good enough for he, she, it? Because we have no choice in the matter. The decision was made by those who fixed our grammar at a certain stage of its evolution, and their decision will probably stand forever.

If rhetoric study was the military, grammar teachers would be the drill sergeants.

If the components of the body were organs and veins and cells, then the components of thought and language were words and grammar.

I had to quit using spell check. I didn't have overdraft protection!!

I hear there are now Knightsbridge clinics offering semicolonic irrigation – but for many it may be too late.

I know grammar by ear only, not by note, not by the rules.

I learned to teach grammar. And then I realized that we can't separate these two things. We have to do them together because they're integral. That's when I learned how important grammar is, that part of the understanding process is grammatical. That's how I taught myself to write prose. I keep learning and learning. I'd come into my class and say, "Guess what I found out last night. Tenses are a way of ordering the chaos around time." I learned that grammar was not arbitrary, that it served a purpose, that it helped to form the way we through, that it could be freeing as well as restrictive.

I love you. You are the object of my affection and the object of my sentence.