#grammar

Stupid English." "English isn't stupid," I say. "Well, my English teacher is." He makes a face. "Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won't let me." "Why not?" "He says lunch isn't a subject." I glance at him. "It isn't." "Well," Jacob says, "it's not a predicate, either. Shouldn't he know that? ↗

— Jodi Picoult

#grammar #humor #school #humor

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. ↗

— Stephen Hawking

#language #change

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

#grammar #manners #punctuation #grammar

I don't know anything but the simplest rules of English grammar, and I seldom consciously apply them. Nevertheless, I instinctively write correctly and, I like to think, in an interesting fashion. I know when something sounds right and when it doesn't, and I can tell the difference without hesitation, even when writing at breakneck speed. How do I do this? I haven't the faintest idea. ↗

— Issac Asimov

#grammar

You see, I believe that you cannot be taught to 'write.' You can be taught grammar and punctuation, but you cannot be taught to be a writer. That has to come from within. ↗

— Robert J. Randisi

#writers-on-writing #grammar

... Likewise, Oscar Wilde asked an English journalist to look over 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' before publication: "Will you also look after my 'wills' and 'shalls' in proof. I am Celtic in my use of these words, not English." Wilde's novel upset virtually every code of late Victorian respectability, but he had to get his modal auxiliaries just right. ↗

— Andrew Elfenbein

#oscar-wilde #respect

A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped's latin for beast, as everybody that's gone through grammar knows, or else what's the use in having grammars at all? ↗

— Charles Dickens

#grammar

I listen to people talking sometimes, that great river that is language, with all its undercurrents of grammar and nuance, and I wonder how we all learn so quickly to speak it, given that we begin when we are barely old enough to stand upright. I have no memory of finding it hard. Indeed, I have no memory of it at all. ↗

— Sarah Dunant

#grammar

thnkz 4 hlpng e wth e spllng d gwammer mestr josef ↗

— ward schiller

#grammar #school #spelling #grammar

Some minds, at some point, discover that they can not make sense of their own predications without attention to grammar, although they do not ordinarily think of what they are doing as an exercise in grammar. ↗

— Richard Mitchell

#thinking #grammar