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Punctuation is a courtesy designed to help readers to understand a story without stumbling.

Lynne Truss

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Lynne Truss
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: May 31
Author
Journalist
Writer
Kingston
Reader
Story
Help
Understand
Punctuation
Helping
Stumbling
Stories
Courtesy
Without
Designed
Readers

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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.
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The way people behave towards each other is a measure of their value as human beings.
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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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What one discovers in life, I find, is that one's personality defects don't come and go.
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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.
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After university, I got a job sub-editing and for years I was a literary editor.
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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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Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
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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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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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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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In my worst moments, I think the biggest effect of 'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' was to kill the happiness of people who had previously skipped through life, unaware of all the atrocities lurking in the world around them.
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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.
Lynne Truss
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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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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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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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The rule is: don’t use commas like a stupid person. I mean it.
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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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Why did the Apostrophe Protection Society not have a militant wing? Could I start one? Where do you get balaclavas?
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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