Lynne Truss Quotes

We have a language that is full of ambiguities; we have a way of expressing ourselves that is often complex and elusive, poetic and modulated; all our thoughts can be rendered with absolute clarity if we bother to put the right dots and squiggles between the words in the right places. Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking. If it goes, the degree of intellectual impoverishment we face is unimaginable.

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.

Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly. Ludwig Wittgenstein

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

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.

Clearness ornaments profound thoughts.

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

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.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

People who think well, write well

The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language.

If you can't write clearly, you probably don't think nearly as well as you think you do.

Grammar is...the pole you grab to get your thoughts up on their feet and walking.

Anyone should be very suspicious of a sentence he's written that can't be read aloud easily.

It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.

In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.

Short, sweet, and to the point. Clear writing, and therefore clear commands, comes from clear thinking. Think simple.

Writing distills, crystallizes, and clarifies thought.

Most thinkers write badly, because they communicate not only their thoughts, but also the thinking of them.

True brevity of expression consists in a man only saying what is worth saying, while avoiding all diffuse explanations of things which every one can think out for himself.

Multitudes of words are neither an argument of clear ideas in the writer, nor a proper means of conveying clear notions to the reader.

When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking.