Why no s for two deer,but an s for two monkeys?Brother Quang saysno one knows.So much for rules!Whoever invented English should be bitten by a snake.

By the way I also would say “I got a book.” But your teacher and I are not “English teachers” in the same sense. She has to put across an idea of what the English...

Grammar, which can govern even Kings.

Truly good manners are invisible: they ease the way for others, without drawing attention to themselves. It is no accident that the word “punctilious” (“attentive to formality or etiquette”) comes from the same original root...

We got through all of Genesis and part of Exodus before I left. One of the main things I was taught from this was not to begin a sentence with And. I pointed out that...

I can’t think why fancy religions should have such a ghastly effect on one’s grammar. It’s a kind of intellectual rot that sets in, I’m afraid.

The female form provides the solution in which the essence itself is held; she is passio, and acted upon, the male is actio, the mover.

What really alarms me about President Bush’s ‘War on Terrorism’ is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is ‘Terrorism’ going to surrender? It’s well known, in philological circles, that...

The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into...

Where was the threshold, between the inner world and the outer one? We each move unthinkingly through this gateway every day, we use the passwords of grammar–I say, you say, he and she, it, on...

… [In ‘Pride and Prejudice’] Mr Collins’s repulsiveness in his letter [about Lydia’s elopement] does not exist only at the level of the sentence: it permeates all aspects of his rhetoric. Austen’s point is that...

WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? Tiny shouts in my ear, and I want to say, “Hopefully, go find a guy who knows there is no u in awesome

Grammar is like a strive for perfection. It’s useless really.

It’s good netiquette to judge others by the the intent of their words not content of characters.

Those extra letters dangling at the ends of words are the genitalia of grammar.

Evolution did not design us to believe only true facts, nor to buy only useful products, nor to say only meaningful sentences

Grammar, he saw, was agreement, community, consensus.

The Grocery Checkout Proviso: The more things you care about, the more vulnerable you are. If you are part of that epicurean minority in this country that is still offended by violations of the English...

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

In grammar, as in war, there is strength in numbers.

I decided quickly that committing crimes against grammar was a hard limit for me.

If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course,...

Stupid English.””English isn’t stupid,” I say.”Well, my English teacher is.” He makes a face. “Mr. Franklin assigned an essay about our favorite subject, and I wanted to write about lunch, but he won’t let me.””Why...

Each letter of the alphabet is a steadfast loyal soldier in a great army of words, sentences, paragraphs, and stories. One letter falls, and the entire language falters.

The best grammarian still can’t write a verse.

Thou shalt not use the 140 characters limit as an excuse for bad grammar and/or incorrect spelling.

People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.

Whenever I write a paragraph in English, I first check it with the Google Translator, and most often it says no language detected.

Sex is a matter of biology, while gender is a matter of grammar, and there is no earthly reason why sex should be involved in gender distinctions.

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted...

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect...

The bridge between the words glamour and grammar is magic. According to the OED, glamour evolved through an ancient association between learning and enchantment.

Grammarians make no new thoughts, but thoughts make new grammar.

The academic bias against subjectivity not only forces our students to write poorly (“It is believed…,” instead of, “I believe…”), it deforms their thinking about themselves and their world. In a single stroke, we delude...

A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.

It is very useful, when one is young, to learn the difference between “literally” and “figuratively.” If something happens literally, it actually happens; if something happens figuratively, it feels like it is happening. If you...

In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words, we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point and concern ourselves only with the marvels of...

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before–and thus was the Empire forged.

Which is him?” The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go in a book someday.

But doesn’t add something to what has come before; but takes something away. At its most daring, it can feel like a Bat Turn, a 180-degree spin int the Batmobile. Make that a But Turn.

Man, wow, there’s so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical...

The greater part of the world’s troubles are due to questions of grammar.

It never ceases to amaze me how prosaic, pedestrian, unimaginative people can persistently pontificate about classical grammatical structure as though it’s fucking rocket science. These must be the same people who hate Picasso, because he...

The English language is a work in progress. Have fun with it.

thnkz 4 hlpng e wth e spllng d gwammer mestr josef

Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don’t work that way. French? Dieu!...

An imperfect creative expression is much more sensible and creative than a grammatically perfect expression without an iota of sense and value in it.

Try – Takes the infinitive: “try to mend it,” not “try and mend it.” Students of the language will argue that ‘try and’ has won through and become idiom. Indeed it has, and it is...

English doesn’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.

We can trace the communitarian fantasy that lies at the root of all humanism back to the model of a literary society, in which participation through reading the canon reveals a common love of inspiring...