English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
– Terry Pratchett
Tag: grammar
Quotable 344
Learn spelling and grammar because no matter how well you write, if your mechanics are lousy, so is your writing.
– Nat Segaloff
Author’s Note: Adding to the Fun
While tooling around online, I came across someone who unabashedly used the word “funnest” in a sentence. The Internet is a wonderful place, and I spend a lot of time there, but it isn’t necessarily a haven for grammar purity.
The usage irked me, and the sneaking suspicion that it’s slowly becoming standard irked me even more. A quick search led me (naturally) to both Grammar Girl and the Grammarist. The short version of both is that I was right to be irked: those of us who would rather rake our nails across a chalkboard than to use “funner” or “funnest” are likely on the losing end of linguistic history. There’s nothing fun about that.
Continue reading “Author’s Note: Adding to the Fun”
Quotable 143
Decent grammar and punctuation isn’t that hard to master so if you can’t be bothered agents, publishers and other writers will be inclined to think you don’t care very much about writing after all.
– Alexia Casale
Preamble for the Copy Editor
We the copy editors of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union of words, establish grammatical justice, ensure linguistic tranquility, provide for the comma defense, promote the gerund’s welfare, and secure the blessings of our First Amendment liberty to ourselves and our prose poetry, do order and endorse our stylebooks for whatever organizations still value us.