Mignon Fogarty > Quotes

“I love you. You are the object of my affection and the object of my sentence.”
― Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

“...passive voice is better than writing out a humongous number and taking the risk that your readers' brains will be numb by the time they get to the verb.”
― Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

“In the United States, periods and commas go inside the quotation mark. In Britain, they go outside the quotation mark. Squiggly said, “No.” (United States) Squiggly said, “No”. (Britain)   “No,” said Squiggly. (United States) “No”, said Squiggly. (Britain)”
― Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's Punctuation 911: Your Guide to Writing it Right

“I’ve read long, contorted arguments from noted grammarians about why it’s OK to end sentences with prepositions when the prepositions aren’t extraneous, but the driving point still seems to be that nobody in their right mind talks this way. Yes, you could say, “On what did you step?” but not even grammarians think you should.”
― Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

“If you’re writing a polite command, you don’t need a question mark. Would you please let me do that for you.”
― Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl Presents The Ultimate Writing Guide for Students

“I consider it my calling to dispel the myth that it’s against the rules to split infinitives. It”
― Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

“linguists sometimes describe a word as a shibboleth. It means that the word tags you as a member of a certain group or class. For example, if you say irregardless, it tags you as someone who is poorly educated or doesn’t use proper language. Shibboleth”
― Mignon Fogarty, The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl

“My idea of fun is splitting infinitives. To understand my thrill, you have to know that some people believe it’s wrong to split them.”
― Mignon Fogarty, The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl

“Some acronyms have become such accepted words that they are written with lowercase letters, and many people don’t even realize that they are acronyms: scuba (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus), radar (radio detecting and ranging), and laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation).”
― Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl Presents The Ultimate Writing Guide for Students

“The “rule” that you put in a comma when you’d pause while speaking isn’t a real rule. It’s more like a guideline: it’s a decent way to guess if you don’t have a clue, but if the accuracy of what you’re writing actually matters, you need to learn the real rules.”
― Mignon Fogarty, The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl