Walt Whitman Quotes

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.

Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?'

I like commas. I detest semi-colons - I don't think they belong in a story. And I gave up quotation marks long ago. I found I didn't need them, they were fly-specks on the page.

Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.

I'm pretty sure when I need a comma; I'm not so sure about a semicolon.

I don't like the way question marks look. They're really ugly. They look like blots. At some other point in my life, I might have disliked them because I never knew how to properly apply them. Also commas, and whether they were outside the quote or inside the quote - that all seemed like an unnecessary pain in the ass.

The commas are the most useful and usable of all the stops. It is highly important to put them in place as you go along. If you try to come back after doing a paragraph and stick them in the various spots that tempt you you will discover that they tend to swarm like minnows into sorts of crevices whose existence you hadn't realized and before you know it the whole long sentence becomes immobilized and lashed up squirming in commas. Better to use them sparingly, and with affection, precisely when the need for each one arises, nicely, by itself.

For any true stickler, you see, the sight of the plural word “Book’s” with an apostrophe in it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement, though greatly accelerated. First there is shock. Within seconds, shock gives way to disbelief, disbelief to pain, and pain to anger. Finally (and this is where the analogy breaks down), anger gives way to a righteous urge to perpetrate an act of criminal damage with the aid of a permanent marker.

A comma . . . catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

I try to write conversationally; I try to write like people speak and put the emphasis on the right syllable.

I've gotten very alert not just to mixed metaphor but to any writing mistake.

To write you have to be able to know how to put words together.

It's always nice to end your sentences with an exclamation mark, and not a comma.

I have great respect for the semicolon; it is a mighty handy little fellow.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

When I split an infinitive, God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.

I really like grammar. And spelling. I was a spelling-bee kid. I'm hard-core about grammar.

The thing that's depressing is teaching graduate students today and discovering that they don't know simple elemental facts of grammar. They really do not know how to scan a line; they've never been taught to scan a line. Many of them don't know the difference between 'lie' and 'lay,' let alone 'its' and 'it's.' And they're in graduate school!

I have been fighting over commas all my life.

I am not a grammarian. Maybe my style is eccentric.

If my mom reads that I'm grammatically incorrect I'll have hell to pay.

I found a great many pieces of punctuation and typography lying around dormant when I came along - and I must say I had a good time using them.

I don't think, in my entire 18 years as a student, I ever used an exclamation point in an academic paper.

I have to admit that I'm not very good with grammar. They taught grammar in elementary and high school, but I went to public schools, so I never really learned it.