Trevor Paglen Quotes

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 had really good English teachers in elementary through high school. Not only were we required to read a lot - which is the best training for writing - we were drilled on grammar every day, every night. I hated the drill part, but I don't dangle my participles too often.

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

Grammar is the grave of letters.

I never actually learned the rules of grammar, relying instead only on what sounded right.

Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find?

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

You can learn Elvish, if you want. It's a language like Italian and English. You can learn to read it, you can learn to write it, and you can learn to speak it.

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

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

I am gennerally understood tho I do not use that awkward squad of pointings called commas colons semicolons etc.

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

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.

Most of us learn to read by looking at each word in a sentence - one at a time.

I don't like it when people don't know the difference between 'their', 'they're', 'there'.

I think my mistakes were kind of common - leaning on cliches and adjectives in the place of clear, vivid writing. But at least I knew how to spell, which seems to be a rarity these days.

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

I had been learning Italian for years. I always loved Latin, but Italian is a living language; I'm writing in it now as well as reading it. It is so interesting delving further into language.

I grew up in the public schools, my mom taught in them, and then my daughter is in them.

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

You could imagine a language exactly like English except it doesn't have connectives like 'and' that allow you to make longer expressions. An infant learning truncated English would have no idea about this: They would just pick it up as they would standard English.

You have to look at the value of different kinds of words. Adjectives weaken, and adverbs come even farther down the line. Verbs are strong; verbs and nouns.

Grammar is the analysis of language.

Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.