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What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

Lynne Truss

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Lynne Truss
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: May 31
Author
Journalist
Writer
Kingston
Instead
Supporters
Use
Supporter
Ends
Tendency
Alarmist
World
Anxious
Semicolon
Tendencies
Precipitate
Contemporary
Alarmists
Thus
Fret
Writers
Dash

More quotes by Lynne Truss

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The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.
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As with email, the recipient of a texted question seems to have the option to ignore it, while nevertheless saying hello, lovely day, and so on.
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The way people behave towards each other is a measure of their value as human beings.
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It used to be just CIA agents with ear-pieces who walked round with preoccupied, faraway expressions, and consequently regarded all the little people as irrelevant scum. Now, understandably, it's nearly everybody.
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If we looked inside ourselves and remembered how insignificant we are, just for a couple of minutes a day, respect for other people would be an automatic result.
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Texting is a supremely secretive medium of communication - it's like passing a note - and this means we should be very careful what we use it for.
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Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?
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Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.
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I hate to be treated as if I'm invisible. I get incensed when people talk across me or refuse to catch my eye in a restaurant or shop.
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The main advantage of working at home is that you get to find out what cats really do all day.
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There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and those who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken.
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What one discovers in life, I find, is that one's personality defects don't come and go.
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I do needlepoint from kits. I give them as gifts to people in the form of cushion covers and they are often speechless with horror.
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You should read Wodehouse when you're well and when you're poorlywhen you're travelling, and when you're notwhen you're feeling clever, and when you're feeling utterly dim. Wodehouse always lifts your spirits,no matter how high they happen to be already.
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Oh, the illusion of choice in the modern world - don't get me started. But don't you agree that the Internet has softened our brains and made us forget that 'choice' used to mean something different from selecting options from menus?
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The idea of withholding a massive secret is obviously quite exciting to some people. It is also the basis of much classic drama, of course, from Sophocles onwards.
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I used to help my dad with a stall selling eggs when I was about 12. People were so hard up they would ask for one egg. But mostly no one came by at all. It was very demoralising.
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I am not against marriage. I lived with someone for 11 years. But we weren't in love, and I thought that was quite important.
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Do you lend books and DVDs to people? If so, don't you always regret it? All my life I have forced books on to people who have subsequently forgotten all about it. Meanwhile, on my shelves sit many orphaned books loaned to me over the years by trusting, innocent souls - some as long ago as the Seventies.
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In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.
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