Lynne Truss Quotes

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

No matter what any of the grammar teachers say, punctuation is an arbitrary matter. It should be used to make sentences clear.

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

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

Why say 'utilize' when you can say 'use'?

The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

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

Whatever is clearly expressed is well wrote.

To be understood a writer has to explain almost everything.

The censure of frequent and long parentheses has led writers into the preposterous expedient of leaving out the marks by which they are indicated. It is no cure to a lame man to take away his crutches.

You could figure out at least 80 percent of the context and meaning of a text if people used punctuation, and we wouldn't have had to write our sketch.

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

If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in the pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflicting severity of neglect.

There are some simple maxims which I think might be commended to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. So, if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

Words should be only the clothes, carefully custom-made to fit the thought.

You say what you have to say. But you have to learn to say it in such a way that the reader can see what you mean.

Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought.

You have to be precise. You have to be specific, but you want to be accurate. That is first and foremost. You want to be on top of the story, but words do matter.

You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.

Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Those who write clearly have readers.

Disruption never helps your cause. ... It just looks like you're afraid to have rational discussion.

I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.

A good story needs only a good storyteller.