A Quote by Michael Crichton

The rules of grammar exist in large part to permit readers and writers to operate from a shared set of expectations.

Michael Crichton

Quote Topics

Exist Expectations Grammar Large Large Part Operate Part Permit Readers Rules Set Shared Writers

Quote Author

Michael Crichton
American - Author
October 23, 1942 - November 4, 2008

Grammar is not a set of rules; it is something inherent in the language, and language cannot exist without it. It can be discovered, but not invented.

Charlton Laird

I think the President of the United States must operate by rules. I think our judicial system must operate by the rules. You have to operate by the rules of the system, and if you don't, if you pull rank, then you lose all your credibility.

Ray Dalio

No one complains of the rules of Grammar as fettering Language; because it is understood that correct use is not founded on Grammar, but Grammar on correct use. A just system of Logic or of Rhetoric is analogous, in this respect, to Grammar.

Richard Whately

Hence, a generative grammar must be a system of rules that can iterate to generate an indefinitely large number of structures. This system of rules can be analyzed into the three major components of a generative grammar: the syntactic, phonological, and semantic components... the syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation. The first of these is interpreted by the semantic component; the second, by the phonological component.

Noam Chomsky

There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers.

Peter Schjeldahl

If you want to break the rules of grammar, first learn the rules of grammar.

Kurt Vonnegut

Mr Robert Montgomery's genius [is] far too free and aspiring to be shackled by the rules of syntax? [His] readers must take such grammar as they can get and be thankful.

Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild

I have known writers who paid no damned attention whatever to the rules of grammar and rhetoric and somehow made the language behave for them.

Red Smith

I have a total responsibility to the reader. The reader has to trust me and never feel betrayed. There's a double standard between writers and readers. Readers can be unfaithful to writers anytime they like, but writers must never ever be unfaithful to the readers. And it's appropriate, because the writer is getting paid and the reader isn't.

Jonathan Santlofer

Grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules; it is a compact between people who wish to understand each other.

Robert Breault

We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Neil Gaiman

People who think that grammar is just a collection of rules and restrictions are wrong. If you get to like it, grammar reveals the hidden meaning of history, hides disorder and abandonment, links things and brings opposites together. Grammar is a wonderful way of organising the world how you'd like it to be.

Delphine de Vigan

By a generative grammar I mean simply a system of rules that in some explicit and well-defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences. Obviously, every speaker of a language has mastered and internalized a generative grammar that expresses his knowledge of his language. This is not to say that he is aware of the rules of the grammar or even that he can become aware of them, or that his statements about his intuitive knowledge of the language are necessarily accurate.

Noam Chomsky

I like to hear from my readers, and I like to feel like I'm part of a bigger community of readers and writers.

Maggie Stiefvater

The system we have is one that protects my rights under a president I don`t approve. That tomorrow we`ll do the same for you. And what people have in common is their commitment to those shared rules. And if you have someone who was a challenger to the shared rules, that`s unacceptable. And we`ve never seen that before. Not in a long, long time but we see it now.