A Quote by Beverly Cleary

My favorite books are a constantly changing list, but one favorite has remained constant: the dictionary. Is the word I want to use spelled practice or practise? The dictionary knows. The dictionary also slows down my writing because it is such interesting reading that I am distracted.

Beverly Cleary

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Also Am Because Books Changing Constant Constantly Dictionary Distracted Down Favorite Favorite Book Interesting Knows List My Favorite Practice Practise Reading Remained Use Want Word Writing

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Beverly Cleary
American - Author
Born: April 12, 1916

If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know? If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words? Why is 'phonics' not spelled the way it sounds? How come abbreviated is such a long word?

George Carlin

In my dictionary, and everyone's dictionary in the 1970s, the word 'queer' did mean strange and unusual. There was no slur to it.

Joe Wurzelbacher

I bought a dictionary. First thing I did was, I looked up the word "dictionary", and it said "you're an asshole".

Demetri Martin

We think people go to a dictionary to find out what a word means. Most people go to the dictionary because they don't want to look stupid.

Erin McKean

Hash, x. There is no definition for this word - nobody knows what hash is. Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable. Dictionary, n. A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

Ambrose Bierce

Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book?" asked Mrs. Dodypol. "It depends," says I, "how much you used the dictionary before you read it.

Alexander Theroux

A 'philosophical dictionary' is not a dictionary of philosophy that you use to look up obscure thinkers or recondite terms. It is a collection of brief and pithy essays on diverse topics, informed by one vision, and usually arranged in alphabetical order.

Ian Hacking

The trouble with the dictionary is that you have to know how a word is spelled before you can look it up to see how it is spelled.

Will Cuppy

The bold and discerning writer who, recognizing the truth that language must grow by innovation if it grow at all, makes new words and uses the old in an unfamiliar sense has no following and is tartly reminded that 'it isn't in the dictionary' - although down to the time of the first lexicographer no author ever had used a word that was in the dictionary.

Ambrose Bierce

I am not learning definitions as established in even the latest dictionaries. I am not a dictionary-maker. I am a person a dictionary-maker has to contend with. I am a living evidence in the development of language.

William Stafford

Actually if a writer needs a dictionary he should not write. He should have read the dictionary at least three times from beginning to end and then have loaned it to someone who needs it. There are only certain words which are valid and similes (bring me my dictionary) are like defective ammunition (the lowest thing I can think of at this time).

Ernest Hemingway

I used to keep a dictionary and work with it and then I realized there are more words that exist in the English language than there are in this dictionary.

Nas

In all my years in 'Countdown's' Dictionary Corner, the subject most guaranteed to rankle with our viewers is the presence of Americanisms in the dictionary.

Susie Dent

Most consumers don't have a good metric for deciding on whether the dictionary they want to use is a good one... so they flip the book over, then go to the back, and it says, 'Over 250,000 entries.' And they go, 'Great, this dictionary must be awesome!'

Erin McKean

I subscribe to the online Urban Dictionary's definition of nerd: 'one whose IQ exceeds his weight'. I'm also keen on the same Urban Dictionary's definition of geek: 'the person you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult'. I happily proclaim myself a book nerd/reading geek and proud of it.

Malorie Blackman

Favorite books and authors while growing up - I'd need a book to list them all. For the sake of brevity: Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, Victor Hugo, world's mythology, the Arthurian legends. And the unabridged dictionary. And they're still my favorites. They get better each time I read them.

Lloyd Alexander

A Quote by Beverly Cleary

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