John Clare Quotes

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

Names and other proper nouns shouldn't distract from the language.

I'm very bad at ending sentences. A lot times I just want to say, 'That's the end of my sentence. I have nothing more to say.'

I like all things grammatical, and I had already written several books about parts of speech, and even the alphabet, so everything that makes up a sentence and even a word was covered except for punctuation.

I enjoy finding the right word and giving each its full measure, its full space in a sentence.

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.

I have been fighting over commas all my life.

I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail.

Every sentence stands on its own. Whether that's fair or not, that's kind of the way it is.

In my experience, copy editors, like the stalwart staff I've worked with and learned from in my 34 years at 'TIME,' are linguistic conservatives - the keepers of the flame ignited by the Strunk-White 'Elements of Style,' published in full in 1957 and chosen by 'TIME' as one of the 100 most influential nonfiction books of the past century.

I still don't know whether I know how to write a sentence.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

I leave my editor to put the periods and commas in.

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'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than resort to predictive texting for a - acceptable to some - synonym.

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

Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath.

I don't really know what an adverb is. A dangling participle? That sounds really rude. I don't know what character is, really. Plot seems vaguely juvenile to me. It's all about language, it's all about how you apply it to the page.

I'm a 'frotteur,' someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader's hair frizzy. There's a question of pacing.

In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.

I don't know if I officially proofread my father's book, but I read it. I did get some conception of grammar in general from that.

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

I'm a language-oriented writer who proceeds sentence by sentence.