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The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.

Lynne Truss

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Lynne Truss
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: May 31
Author
Journalist
Writer
Kingston
Use
Persons
Person
Mean
Like
Commas
Rule
Stupid

More quotes by Lynne Truss

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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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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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Writers and painters alike are in the business of consulting their own imaginations, and stimulating the imaginations of others. Together, and separately, they celebrate the absolute mystery of otherness.
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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.
Lynne Truss
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Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.
Lynne Truss
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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 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.
Lynne Truss
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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.
Lynne Truss
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Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
Lynne Truss
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Evidently an A level in English is a sacred trust, like something out of The Lord of the Rings. You must go forth with your A level and protect the English language with your bow of elfin gold.
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.
Lynne Truss
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After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.
Lynne Truss
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All writers learn this, in time: don't show your work to other people until it's safely finished. Even discussing your unborn book in quite general terms can be such an undermining experience that, afterwards, you give it up and go to live in Guatemala.
Lynne Truss
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As someone who sends texts messages more or less non-stop, I enjoy one particular aspect of texting more than anything else: that it is possible to sit in a crowded railway carriage laboriously spelling out quite long words in full, and using an enormous amount of punctuation, without anyone being aware of how outrageously subversive I am being.
Lynne Truss
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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?
Lynne Truss
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The main advantage of working at home is that you get to find out what cats really do all day.
Lynne Truss
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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.
Lynne Truss
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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.
Lynne Truss
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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.
Lynne Truss