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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

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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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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.
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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 as punctuation.
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After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.
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I recently heard of someone studying the ellipsis (or three dots) for a PhD. And, I have to say, I was horrified. The ellipsis is the black hole of the punctuation universe, surely, into which no right-minded person would willingly be sucked, for three years, with no guarantee of a job at the end.
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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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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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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?
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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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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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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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What one discovers in life, I find, is that one's personality defects don't come and go.
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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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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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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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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.
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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Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.
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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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Nice clothes fall apart. Nice clocks don't work. Bits fall off the nice cooker. It is hard to accept that pricing is unrelated to quality, but it's plainly true. Nowadays, we pay the price that satisfies our particular personality type and then we live with the painful consequences.
Lynne Truss