Writing Conventions Quotes

I hate commas in the wrong places.

The rules of capitalization are so unfair to words in the middle of a sentence.

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

If you write in category, you write knowing there's a framework, there are reader expectations.

Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops; for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

Providing a writer isn't put off by conventions - and some are - attending them can be a nice break from the necessary isolation of writing.

Semicolons . . . signal, rather than shout, a relationship. . . . A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do."

When I was in law school I was taught that the great writers were people like [Oliver Wendell] Holmes Jr. and [Benjamin N.] Cardozo. But you go back and read their prose and it's sort of perfumed and very ornate and show-offy. And they're constantly striving for these abstractions that seem archaic nowadays.

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

You need to realize that most writing rules aren't laws, they're rules of thumb.

One thing that drives me nuts... well, let me ask you, when writers write do they not use quotation marks anymore?

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.

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

I don't even know how to use a semicolon to this day; I use a comma every time. And you know what? If I email somebody and they get upset about me using a comma instead of a semicolon, that's not a person I want to work with anyway. And that's how you weed people out of your life.

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.

Actually, I've taught creative writing in Turkey, at an English language university, where the students were native Turkish speakers, but they were writing their essays in English, and they were very interesting - even the sense of structure, the conventions of writing, the different styles of writing.

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a matter of rule; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I have a great respect for the semicolin; it's a useful little chap

The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe!

If you write genre fiction, you follow the rules, and you have to follow them because readers expect that.

I think it is probably more important to attend specialized conventions for a journeyman writer than any other, but it's useful at all stages of a career, if for nothing else, to find out how the industry is working at any given time.

Listen to advice. You don't know how many writer's conferences I've taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field.

I don't have the notion that everybody has to write in some single academic style.

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.

I would die at the stake rather than change a semi-colon!