The one affectation I have forced on the publisher. . . are my apostrophe-free ellisions. Because I write my scripts to read myself, I dont spell 'don't' with an apostrophe. I spell it 'dont'. We all know the word and it seems foolish to put in an extraneous apostrophe. Punctuation marks are devices we use to make the meaning of sentences clear. There is nothing confusing about a word like 'dont' printed without an apostrophe to indicate an omitted letter.
If the semicolon is one of the neglected children in the family of punctuation marks these days, told to stay in its room and entertain itself, because mummy and daddy are busy, the apostrophe is the abused victim.
Punctuation marks are the traffic signals of language: they tell us to slow down, notice this, take a detour, and stop.
I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses.
But phony, Hemingway was not, and poseur he was not. He did not shoot lions and leopards because he was searching for the answer to life. He shot lions and leopards because he bloody well liked to hunt and shoot, and killing was the best punctuation mark at the end of the intricate and fascinating process of hunting.
The Biblical text does not have punctuation marks like periods and question marks. Where we end sentences is a matter of interpretation.
smoking had come to be an important punctuation mark in the long sentence of a day on the road.
We have one of those conversations where every thing clicks, meshes, corresponds, locks, where even our pauses, even our punctuation marks, seem to be nodding in agreement.
That's always been Guillermo's preference, is to have as much there practically as is humanly possible, and that digital graphic images are more a punctuation mark than they are a replacement.
[Mary Wortley Montagu] wrote more letters, with fewer punctuation marks, than any Englishwoman of her day; and her nephew, the fourth Baron Rokeby, nearly blinded himself in deciphering the two volumes of undated correspondence which were printed in 1810. Two more followed in 1813, after which the gallant Baron either died at his post or was smitten with despair; for sixty-eight cases of letters lay undisturbed. . . 'Les morts n'écrivent point,' said Madame de Maintenon hopefully; but of what benefit is this inactivity, when we still continue to receive their letters?
I had a vision. . . of being found on the pavement by some passerby, with a small punctuation mark ending my sentence of life.
I need an irony punctuation mark for the clueless.
Human beings are like timid punctuation marks sprinkled among the incomprehensible sentences of life.
It (the dash ) is a comfortable punctuation mark since even the most rigorous critic can seldom claim that any particular example of it is a misuse. Its overuse is its greatest danger, and the writer who can't resist dashes may be suspected of uncoordinated thinking.
Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.
Suicide is the punctuation mark at the end of many artistic careers
