H. L. Mencken Quotes

I caution against beginning or ending a quotation with ellipses.

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.

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

Thurber was asked by a correspondent: "Why did you have a comma in the sentence, 'After dinner, the men went into the living-room'?" And his answer was probably one of the loveliest things ever said about punctuation. "This particular comma," Thurber explained, "was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.

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.

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

Nothin'g sa'ys q'uality fantas'y l'ike misuse'd apos'tro'phes.

Here is a les­son in writ­ing. First rule: Do not use semi­colons. They are trans­ves­tite her­maph­ro­dites rep­re­sent­ing absolutely noth­ing. All they do is show you've been to col­lege.

A writer should care about one thing - the language. To write well - that is his duty. That is his only duty.

You just can't make bad writing look good. But if you have good writing, you just say it, and it's almost done.

Everything I write, I read aloud. It has to sound a certain way and look a certain way on page.

Because there is no better tool for writing than experience. It has very little to do with grammar and everything to do with knowing.

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

You don't have to be the most amazing writer, you don't have to get top marks in your English GCSE, you just have to be someone who can tell a good story, and tell it right, and tell it well.

To write, I think it is very important to read. The more you read, the more you know the techniques of writing.

I believe an editor's job is to help a writer sound like himself or herself.

The challenges of writing a book are very different from writing a blog or tweets. I've been writing a blog since I was in the 6th grade, so I had this style of writing that was definitely not proper for writing a book.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.

I can't write - I don't even know how to punctuate.

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

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

It is well to remember that grammar is common speech formulated.

Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.