Best 199 quotes in «grammar quotes» category

The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense.

The police never saw a noun they didn't want to turn into a verb, so it quickly became "to action", as in you action me to undertake a Falcon assessment, I action a Falcon assessment, a Falcon assessment has been actioned and we all action in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine. This, to review a major inqurity is to review the list of "actions" and their consequences, in the hope that you'll spot something that thirty-odd highly trained and experienced detectives didn't.

There's a fine line between funny and annoying – and it's exactly the width of a quotation mark.

The process of editing a piece of writing seems sometimes a lot like natural selection. Your efforts never really eliminate the mistakes. You just cause them to evolve into a sneakier, more robust breed.

The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

There’s a rumor it seems involving the finance minister. He’s supposed to resign any time now,” she said. “Some kind of scandal about a misconstrued comment. He made a comment about the economy that may have been misconstrued. The whole country is analyzing the grammar and syntax of this comment. Or it wasn’t even what he said. It was when he paused. They are trying to construe the meaning of the pause. It could be deeper, even, than grammar. It could be breathing.

This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as non-traditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank.

thnkz 4 hlpng e wth e spllng d gwammer mestr josef

Though grammatically perfect, a French accent stretches his English out of shape.

Try - Takes the infinitive: "try to mend it," not "try and mend it." Students of the language will argue that 'try and' has won through and become idiom. Indeed it has, and it is relaxed and acceptable. But 'try to' is precise, and when you are writing formal prose, try and write 'try to.

Vocabulary and grammar are your primary tools. They're most effectively used, even most effectively abused, by people who understand them.

Was it too much to expect the rest of the world to care about grammar or pay attention to details?

We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring messages. At the heart of humanism so understood we discover a cult or club fantasy: the dream of the portentous solidarity of those who have been chosen to be allowed to read. In the ancient world—indeed, until the dawn of the modern nation-states—the power of reading actually did mean something like membership of a secret elite; linguistic knowledge once counted in many places as the provenance of sorcery. In Middle English the word 'glamour' developed out of the word 'grammar'. The person who could read would be thought easily capable of other impossibilities.

We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that most sentences in the Bible began with And, but I was told that English had changed since the time of King James. In that case, I argued, why make us read the Bible? But it was in vain. Robert Graves was very keen on the symbolism and mysticism in the Bible at that time.

The true structure of the Welsh grammar will be revealed only when we look at sentences slightly more complicated than its basic VSO pattern. Welsh is no different from the rest of the world: it does involve an extra step, but even that isn't all that unusual. Welsh is like Shakespearean English on acid: the verb always - not just in questions - moves to the beginning. Alternatively, it can be viewed as taking the French grammar a step further. While the verb stops at tense in French, it moves further in Welsh to a position that traditional grammarians call the complementizer (don't ask).

Those extra letters dangling at the ends of words are the genitalia of grammar.

Thou shalt not use the 140 characters limit as an excuse for bad grammar and/or incorrect spelling.

Today, I learned, the comma, this is, a, comma (,) a period, with, a tail, Miss Kinnian, says its, importent, because, it makes writing, better, she said, somebody, could lose, a lot, of money, if a comma, isnt in, the right, place, I got, some money, that I, saved from, my job, and what, the foundation, pays me, but not, much and, I dont, see how, a comma, keeps, you from, losing it, But, she says, everybody, uses commas, so Ill, use them, too,,,,

Verum de nulla orationis parte praecipere difficilius est, quam de collocatione et usu coniunctionum.

Well, I am more partial to a semicolon myself.

Whatever language Death speaks is not ours; and most of us spend no time acquiring the complex grammar, in which every verb is irregular and only the past tense obtains, until it is too late

When someone asks me, "Which grammar book should i buy?" I tell him to buy any grammar book because the rules of tense, voice etc. are same in all the books! Choosing a grammar book is not vital, practising the grammatical rules is more vital!

Why are we running after beautiful texts, perfect language, fancy vocabulary! Forget the Grammar, forget those perfect writers. Remember writers write from their heart, so just pen down your thoughts and throw away external fancies.

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? Tiny shouts in my ear, and I want to say, "Hopefully, go find a guy who knows there is no u in awesome

What the hell was it about e-mail that made everybody forget the stuff they learned in second grade, like capitalizing I and proper names, and using periods? Hello? We all learned how to do this less than five years out of diapers!

What would you do if you ruled the world?” The gigolo replied that he would abolish all laws. Barthes said: “Even grammar?

Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway every day, we use the passwords of grammar--I say, you say, he and she, it, on the other hand, does not say--paying for the privilege of sanity with common coin, with meanings we've agreed on.

Whom" may indeed be on the way out, but so is Venice, and we still like to go there.

Why no s for two deer, but an s for two monkeys? Brother Quang says no one knows. So much for rules! Whoever invented English should be bitten by a snake.

Write like you speak with the 'rhythms of human speech,' as William Zinsser said, and in as few words as possible. Use action verbs to carry water.

You'd think that the ability to write lucid prose would be the bottom line for any publishing novelist, but it is not so... You would expect that proofreaders and copy editors would pick this sort of stuff up even if the writers of such embarrassing English do not, but many of them seem as illiterate as the writers they are trying to bail out.

Youir're doing this wrong.

Your Egnlish is so atrocious I don't feel the need to even respond' seems but a long-winded way of saying, 'Home-schooled dumbass.

American grammar doesn't have the sturdiness of British grammar, but it has its own scruffy charm.

. . . among all grammars meeting this condition (of adequacy), we select the simplest.

Wir brauchen keine Dichter mit guter Grammatik. Zu guter Grammatik fehlt uns Geduld.

Writing well is more than mechanics, but it is not less.

Yes I am aware of the rules. Yes I can totally see how I err the Queen. Yes it is this very fact of slaying her language. That gives my soul its melodies.

You are an author! You will be a published author. Take pride in that, and present only your best work. Then, continue to improve, so your best gets even better.

Your expression of an inner feeling of love or message in words does not need the grammar.

After all, when a thought takes one's breath away, a lesson on grammar seems an impertinence.

Bad music is the attempt to imitate something that has very strong rules and grammar.

A writer who can't write in a grammerly manner better shut up shop.

Bad grammar is the leading cause of slow, painful death in North America.

Boyhood is distracted for years with precepts of grammar that are infinitely prolix, perplexed and obscure.

Ever since grammar school, I knew I wanted to be famous - I always wanted to be a singer.

Geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer.

A philosopher once said, 'Half of good philosophy is good grammar.'

Begin my studies with the paper and this pencil and i'm working through the grammar of my fears.

english doesn't borrow from other languages. english follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.