71 Quotes About Punctuation

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air."Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder."I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up."The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.

Was that semi-colon some kind of flirty wink or just bad punctuation?

I apologise if you all know this, but the point is many, many people do not. Why else would they open a large play area for children, hang up a sign saying "Giant Kid's Playground", and then wonder why everyone stays away from it? (Answer: everyone is scared of the Giant Kid.)

Use lots of exclamation points. They love to be overused.

Brackets come in various shapes, types and names:1 round brackets (which we call brackets, and the Americans call parentheses)2 square brackets [which we call square brackets, and the Americans call brackets]

So the particular strengths of the colon are beginning to become clear. A colon is nearly always preceded by a complete sentence, and in its simplest usage it rather theatrically announces what is to come. Like a well-trained magician's assistant, it pauses slightly to give you time to get a bit worried, and then efficiently whisks away the cloth and reveals the trick complete.

So how should you use a colon, to begin with? H. W. Fowler said that the colon "delivers the goods that have been invoiced in the preceding words", which is not a bad image to start off with.

In America, they use exclamation marks to make everything terrific, in France to make everything terrible, but here in England we don't use them at all.

Here is an appropriate use of the exclamation mark:The last thing he expected when the elevator door opened was the snarling tiger that leapt at him."Ahhhhh!"...In almost all situations that do not involve immediate physical danger or great surprise, you should think twice before using an exclamation mark. If you have thought twice and the exclamation mark is still there, think about it three times, or however many times it takes until you delete it.