Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.
– Lorrie Moore
Tag: punctuation
Quotable 145
My attitude toward punctuation is that it ought to be as conventional as possible. The game of golf would lose a good deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green. You ought to be able to show that you can do it a good deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements.
– Ernest Hemingway
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
Pen to Paper: Apostrophes
We all know what an apostrophe is, but I see them misused daily. Although I don’t imagine that most of my readers need it, here is a basic primer on how to use apostrophes. Send the link to someone you care about who needs it. (Or maybe to someone you despise who needs it.)
Pen to Paper: Long Live the Serial Comma
Let me come straight out with it: I like the serial comma. It has an elegance and often a usefulness that I appreciate. Still, I don’t go into a meltdown when a writer doesn’t use one (unless it would have improved the sentence); there are bigger dragons to battle.