A Quote by John Humphrys

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.

John Humphrys

Quote Topics

Because Busy Children Daddy Days Entertain Family Itself Marks Mummy Neglected Neglected Child Punctuation Punctuation Marks Room Stay These Days Victim

Quote Author

John Humphrys
Welsh - Author
Born: August 17, 1943

In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets overexcited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.

Lynne Truss

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.

Andy Rooney

Those days of every child having a mummy and daddy who lived at home - Daddy went to work, and Mummy stayed at home and took care of everyone - those days have almost gone, and it's so much more unconventional now.

Kate Winslet

To those who care about punctuation, a sentence such as "Thank God its Friday" (without the apostrophe) rouses feelings not only of despair but of violence. The confusion of the possessive "its" (no apostrophe) with the contractive "it's" (with apostrophe) is an unequivocal signal of illiteracy and sets off a Pavlovian "kill" response in the average stickler.

Lynne Truss

I sounded like a fantasist at school when you'd go round the class, and they'd say, 'What do Mummy and Daddy do?' I was like, 'Mummy's an actress, and Daddy's a musician, and he plays his guitar with Bonnie Tyler.' And the teachers used to, like, roll their eyes, like, 'She's mental!'

Emily Atack

Sometimes it is like juggling with broken glass because both things are very sensitive and have to be handled with care. I can't let the career be neglected and I can't let my family and children be neglected either.

Kelly Price

For years I've wanted to write a book about mummies, and had been following the science of mummy CT scans when the premise for 'The Keepsake' occurred to me: what if an 'ancient' mummy turns out to have a bullet in its leg? How does a modern murder victim get turned into a mummy?

Tess Gerritsen

I mean, full stops are quite important, aren't they? Yet by contrast to the versatile apostrophe, they are stolid little chaps, to say the least. In fact one might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the punctuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burn-out from all the thankless effort.

Lynne Truss

Abused And neglected children have paid the price for liberalism's tendency to sentimentalize the poor.

Mona Charen

The Biblical text does not have punctuation marks like periods and question marks. Where we end sentences is a matter of interpretation.

Elie Wiesel

I love a cardboard coffin. Both Mummy and Daddy went off in cardboard coffins, painted - Daddy's was rifle green. Beautifully made.

Joanna Lumley

Because adoption meets the needs of children so successfully, and because there have long been waiting lists of couples hoping to adopt babies and children, it would seem that the solution for abused or neglected kids was obvious. But not to the do-gooders. To remove a child from an abusive parent, sever the parent's parental rights, and permit the child to be adopted by a couple who would give the child a loving home began to seem too 'judgmental.'

Mona Charen

I might not use capital letters. But I would definitely use an apostrophe…and probably a period. I’m a huge fan of punctuation.

Rainbow Rowell

The state is now more involved than it ever has been in the raising of children. And children are now more neglected, more abused and more mistreated than they have been in our time. This is not a coincidence. This is not a coincidence. And with all due respect, I am here to tell you it does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family to raise a child.