229 Quotes About Grammar

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

Flammable. An oddity, chiefly useful in saving lives. The common word meaning "combustible" is inflammable. But some people are thrown off by the in- and think inflammable means "not combustible." For this reason, trucks carrying gasoline or explosives are now marked FLAMMABLE. Unless you are operating such a truck and hence are concerned with the safety of children and illiterates, use inflammable.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy skips lightly over academic abstraction, pausing only to note that the term "future perfect" has been abandoned since it was discovered not to be.

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them.

You'd think that the ability to write lucid prose would be the bottom line for any publishing novelist, but it is not so... You would expect that proofreaders and copy editors would pick this sort of stuff up even if the writers of such embarrassing English do not, but many of them seem as illiterate as the writers they are trying to bail out.

As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.

Moods are adjectives of the grammar of life.

The flesh of prose gets its shape and strength from the bones of grammar.

Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.