"Comma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contrary, it has a most elegant curve. It's not the shape I complain about, it's the difference in the work. You see, if I could only get my tail into my mouth I should be a Full-stop; and Full-stops have so little to do nowadays that I should be able to retire at once. Being a Comma is quite another matter; it's work, work, work, from year's end to year's end. Hullo! What is ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... capital, could he but have suppressed his rancour against those who had preceded him in the task, but a misconstruction or misinterpretation, nay, the misplacing of a comma, was in Gifford's eyes a crime worthy of the most severe animadversion. The same fault of extreme severity went through his critical labours, and in general he flagellated with so little pity, that people lost their sense of the criminal's ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... play to remove the cents after the figure "25." A comma and three zeros following it were inserted, followed by a new "00/100." The signature was ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... go with you, my pretty maid, for I've been asked too, in a breathless note from Mellicent, with neither beginning nor ending, nor comma nor full stop. If any one else had written in such a state of agitation, I should have thought something thrilling had occurred, but Mellicent is guaranteed to go off her head on the slightest provocation. Probably it is nothing more exciting than a cake or a teacloth which is to be used ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... appealed to, or at least 'the young and rising naturalists with plastic minds,* [On the Nature of the Limbs, page 482] are adjured." It will be seen that the inverted comma after "naturalists" is omitted; the asterisk referring, in a footnote (here placed in square brackets), to page 482 of the "Origin," seems to have been incorrectly assumed by Mr. Darwin to show the close of the quotation.—Ibid., ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... 'Columbia Springs', to match entry. Page 9: Restored missing period and missing half of closing quote. Page 35: added 's' to 'landing' (...steamers make their various landings.) Page 43: removed extraneous closing quote. Page 46: added comma after 'erection' (..., now in process of erection, ...) Page 55: added 's' to 'make' (forgetting even, as Bryant did, that a vertical line from the top of the cliff on account of the crumbling debris of ages make(s) it impossible ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... here a slight confusion in construction. If a comma preceded terrible, souvent would then be regularly dependent on combien. But there is no authority for this punctuation, and we must supply a repeated combien, thus: tu sais combien terrible . . . [il est it ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... understand it," the President begins, "judicial temperament is largely a fragrance rising from the recollection of corporate employment; it is the ability to throw a comma under the wheels of progress and upset public welfare; I am glad to learn that Mr. L—— has not a 'judicial temperament'; I shall send his name ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... in this world, and in the source text, the comma after 'worls' was a period. This was ...
— Pirke Avot - Sayings of the Jewish Fathers • Traditional Text
... the tale itself that Hobyahs are no more, Mr. Batten's portraits of them would have convinced me that they were the bogles or spirits of the comma bacillus. Mr. Proudfit remarks that the cry "Look ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... had been relieved seemed to be very much relieved indeed; they stretched out their long, cramped bodies luxuriously, and went lumbering off together by twos and threes, with their hands in their pockets. Sara started to follow a bristly comma-caterpillar who went off alone, but he was so big that she just couldn't make up her mind so do it. She had once fed one for three weeks in a fruit jar, and she knew that kind couldn't hurt her—still— She felt she was just compelled ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... sheer nonsense, and yet at times sheer nonsense mows at us from his printed page. Those who clamor for Shakespeare's text, pure and simple, divested of all notes and annotations, have no idea how much thought and time have been expended on every line,—nay, on every word, on every comma,—in the text of any good modern edition of his dramas, and with the single aim, be it remembered, of revealing exactly what the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... established intimate relations with the rules of German. He used small initials for substantives, or capitalized verbs and adjectives according as they appeared important to him. His punctuation was arbitrary; generally he drew a perpendicular line between his words, letting it suffice for a comma or period as the case might be (a proceeding which adds not a little to the embarrassments of him who seeks to translate ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... the name of San Luis, Rey de Francia. Thus it became necessary to distinguish between the two saints of the same name: San Luis, Bishop (Obispo), and San Luis, King; but modern American parlance has eliminated the comma, and they are respectively San Luis Obispo and San Luis Rey. Lasuen, with the honored Padre Peyri and Padre Santiago, conducted the ceremonies on June 13, and the hearts of all concerned were made glad by the subsequent baptism ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... tribune's sorrow is made; and I can only dream of him who, visibly summarizing the immense crisis of human necessity in a work which forgets nothing, which seems to forget nothing, without the blot even of a misplaced comma, will proclaim our Charter to the epochs of the times in which we are, and will let us see it. Blessed be that simplifier, from whatever country he may come,—but all the same, I should prefer him, at the bottom of my ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... - Page 132, para 3, moved a comma - my general policy is not to add/remove/move commas, even though I often find commas which seem to me out of place, but this one was just too ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The Comma (,), Semicolon (;), and Colon (:) mark grammatical divisions in a sentence; as, God is good; for he gives us all things. Be wise to-day, my child: 't is madness ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... not that there is a Semitone Major and Minor,[10] because the Difference cannot be known by an Organ or Harpsichord, if the Keys of the Instrument are not split. A Tone, that gradually passes to another, is divided into nine almost imperceptible Intervals, which are called Comma's, five of which constitute the Semitone Major, and four the Minor. Some are of Opinion, that there are no more than seven, and that the greatest Number of the one half constitutes the first, and the less the second; but this does ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... Added comma. (In performing any labor, as in speaking, reading, singing, mowing, sewing, &c., there will be ...
— A Treatise on Anatomy, Physiology, and Hygiene (Revised Edition) • Calvin Cutter
... not distresses; though the bar of a comma can hardly keep them apart. In order to give it any decent meaning, a tortuous ellipsis is necessary; to pursue which, gives the reader too much toil. Rejecting the first horse in the team, the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... passage between the blades shall take. The groove made upon the inner face of the blade is sufficiently near to the root to be covered by this spacing piece. When the groove has been filled the soft-iron pieces are calked or spread so as to hold the blades firmly in place. A wire of comma section, as shown at A (Fig. 59), is then strung through the punches near the outer ends of the blades and upset or turned over as shown at the right in Fig. 58. This upsetting is done by a tool which shears the ...
— Steam Turbines - A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of - the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers • Hubert E. Collins
... comes, if it comes at all, as the result of a wisely-directed determination. The teacher's part is to exalt, enthuse, stimulate. He must criticise, certainly, but this is generally overdone. Like some teachers of English who can never overlook a misplaced comma, whose idea of English seems to be to spell and to punctuate correctly, there are teachers of public speaking whose critical eye never sees farther than gesture, articulation, and emphasis. With this attitude toward their work, they become fault-finders rather than teachers. ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... otherwise; and she waited, observing him. He set down her basket and the tin pot, and stirring the paint with the brush that was in it began painting large square letters on the middle board of the three composing the stile, placing a comma after each word, as if to give pause while that word was driven well home to ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... this rough work, shaped out a man Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hug With amplest entertainment: my free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax: no levelled malice Infects one comma in the course I hold: But flies an eagle flight, bold, and forth on, Leaving no ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... style of making a diary entry has been preserved. In some cases, a date is followed by a period and emdash and then the entry proper. In others, there is a date, no period and an emdash. In yet others, the date is followed by a comma ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... saying that of another which you ought not to say, and then mocks you by going to that other and telling what you have said.—/Hold, my hand:/ stay! here is my hand. As men clasp hands in sealing a bargain. In Rowe's text the comma ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of the lines which Mr. Landor thinks that 'no authority will reconcile' to our ears. I think otherwise. The caesura is meant to fall not with the comma after difficult , but after thou; and there is a most effective and grand suspension intended. It is Satan who speaks— Satan in the wilderness; and he marks, as he wishes to mark, the tremendous opposition of attitude between the two ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... is not comma however comma averse to' (Jane wrote 'from') 'entertaining your suggestions comma and will be glad if you can make it convenient to call to-morrow bracket Tuesday close the bracket afternoon comma between three ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... "Very truly yours," "Very respectfully," etc., should begin about the middle of the page on the next line below the body of the letter. The first word only should be capitalized, and the expression followed by a comma. The signature should come on the line below and end at the right-hand margin of the page. The address also is sometimes, especially in social notes given at the conclusion, where it should begin, one or two lines below the signature, at ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... force and righteousness of the moral influence. Still, I certainly will, when the time comes, go over the poem carefully, and see where an offence can be got rid of without loss otherwise. The second edition was issued so early that Robert would not let me alter even a comma, would not let me look between the pages in order to the least alteration. He said (the truth) that my head was dizzy-blind with the book, and that, if I changed anything, it would be probably for the worse; like ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... from heedlessness or ignorance. It does not seem to be known that, even where the sense is perfectly clear, a sentence may be deprived of half its force—its spirit—its point—by improper punctuation. For the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... about an hour ago," added Mr. DIBBLE, "saying, that a farewell note without a comma, colon, semi-colon, or period in it, and with every other word beginning with a capital, and underscored, was calculated to drive friends to distraction. I took the liberty of reminding him, my dear, that young ...
— Punchinello Vol. 2, No. 28, October 8, 1870 • Various
... in prose and poetry, which particularly interested George at the time. He was in the habit of preserving in this way choice bits of prose and poetry for future use. They were copied in his clear, fair handwriting, with every i dotted and every t crossed, and every comma and ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... note twice on the way down to the breakfast room, and three times more during the meal; then, having committed its contents to memory down to the last comma, he gave himself up to ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... or Period, should be marked and encircled in the margin, a line being drawn at the word at which either is to be placed, as in No. 15.—16 describes the manner in which the hyphen and ellipsis line are marked; and 17, that in which the Apostrophe, Inverted Comma, the Star, and other References, and Superior Letters, and Figures, are marked for insertion. Notes, if added, should have the word Note, with a Star, and a corresponding Star at the word to which they ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... Like most philosophers, Midni was an amiable man; but one thing invariably put him out. He read in the woods by glow-worm light; insect in hand, tracing over his pages, line by line. But glow-worms burn not long: and in the midst of some calm intricate thought, at some imminent comma, the insect often expired, and Midni groped for a meaning. Upon such an occasion, 'Ho, Ho,' he cried; 'but for one instant of sun- light to see my way to a period!' But sun-light there was none; so Midni sprang to his feet, and parchment ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... it from the aqueous parts, and afterward distill it with a vehement Fire from burnt Clay, or any other, as dry a Caput mortuum as you please, you will, as Chymists confess, [Errata: confesse (delete comma)] by teaching it drive over a good part of the Salt in the form of a Liquor. And to satisfy some ingenious men, That a great part of this Liquor was still true sea salt brought by the Operation of the Fire into Corpuscles so small, and perhaps so advantageously ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... clue—every page and line and letter. The thing's as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It's stuck into every volume as your foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses every word, it dots every i, it places every comma." ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... adjusted so as to mark the wood into thirds, and the stock of the gauge (the portion of the gauge containing the thumb screw in Fig. 82) must be used from the face side of the timber when gauging up the whole of the pieces forming a frame. The face mark on the work is indicated by a glorified comma, and the edge mark is shown by X, as in the various illustrations. Fig. 82 shows the method of holding the gauge in the right hand whilst gauging the lines on ...
— Woodwork Joints - How they are Set Out, How Made and Where Used. • William Fairham
... works from the beginning of the world," (Acts xv. 18.) The complex symbol also teaches more forcibly than in words,—"My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure," (Is, xlvi. 10.) Some have suggested a little change in the punctuation. Instead of placing the comma, after the word "side," place it after the word "within," the meaning would then be, that the "book was written only on one side, namely on the side within." We do not accept the suggestion. The reason is sufficient for its rejection, that the ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... added a Supplement, with so much taste, and such a degree of probability, that it has been judged proper to adopt what he has added. The thread of the discourse will be unbroken, and the reader, it is hoped, will prefer a regular continuity to a mere vacant space. The inverted comma in the margin of the text [transcriber's note: not used, but numbered with decimal rather than Roman numerals] will mark the supplemental part, as far as section 36, where the original proceeds to the end of the Dialogue. The sections of the Supplement will be ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... of fair size can afford at least two murderers —one in jail, under sentence, receiving gifts of flowers and angel cake from kind ladies, and waiting for the court above to reverse the verdict in his case because the indictment was shy a comma; and the other out on bail, awaiting his time for going through the same procedure. But with the English ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... comma was added after "added Olive, eagerly", and "tete-a-tete journey" was changed to ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... write very well, but you do not know the art of punctuating. You write as the water runs, as the arrow flies; therefore, in reading what you have written I have no time to breathe. I cannot separate the different ideas. A comma means a point d'arret, a moment of repose. Every period should be an instant in ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis, yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Babbitt was hypnotized. Her favorite word was "always," which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... their simpler structure and mode of growth. They are essentially filaments which continually multiply by fission—a process often carried so far that the little organisms present themselves as short rods, or as curved (comma-shaped), or even spherical particles (micrococci)—and only in favourable conditions arrest their self-division so as to grow for a time into the thread-like or filament shape. Often these filaments are not straight, but spirally twisted, and are called ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... they would come to life again, and give themselves up for an hour or so to the old delight; the big, strong flies were just as much alive as in midsummer. There was a peculiar sort of earth-bug here that I had not seen before—little yellow things, no bigger than a small-type comma, yet they could jump several thousand times their own length. Think of the strength of such a body in proportion to its size! There is a tiny spider here with its hinder part like a pale yellow pearl. And the pearl is so heavy that the ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... period, comma or hyphen seems to be omitted in the original. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected, but where missing punctuation is not clearly an error, or the omission is harmless to the sense, the text ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... Mark of Punctuation.—Discussion of the paragraph really belongs under the head of punctuation, since its purpose is to set off the larger divisions of the story in the same way that the period and the comma mark sentences and phrases. The indention of the first line catches the eye of the reader and notifies him silently to stop for a summary of his impressions before starting a somewhat different phase of the story. Its purpose, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... showing iridescent play of colour. The body is narrow, laterally compressed and pointed at both ends. The main musculature can be seen through the thin skin to be divided into about sixty pairs of muscle-segments (myotomes) by means of comma-shaped dissepiments, the myocommas, which stretch between the skin and the central skeletal axis of the body. These myotomes enable it to swim rapidly with characteristic serpentine undulations of the body, the movements being ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... plain sensible girl,' exclaimed the old gentleman the moment I entered the room.' (You will notice I put no comma after 'plain.' I am taking it he did not intend one. You can employ one adjective to qualify another, can't you?) 'And I will put it to her, What difference can it make to the Almighty whether I go to church ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... should be so fond of a baby," she said, kissing it, whenever she stopped to put in a comma; "but I don't know how I ever got along without one. He's off at work nearly the whole day, and when I had got through with mine, and had put on my afternoon dress, and was ready to sit down, you can't think how lonesome it was. But now by the time I am ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... 3, para 4, added a missing open-quote - page 8, para 3, deleted a misplaced comma - page 13, Langdon and Dalton are having a conversation, but para 4 incorrectly stated "said St. Clair". It is clear that this should be changed to "said Dalton", because Langdon replies to "George" in his next sentence. ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... another county, and knit the left garter about the right legged stocking (let the other garter and stocking alone) and as you rehearse these following verses, at every comma, knit ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... what a demand there is for neglect in ordinary school work, and how this demand is met by children. Mistakes in beginning reading are very common, such as saying a for an, the for thu, not pausing for a comma, leaving out a word, putting in a word, etc. When fairy tales are related, slight omissions, mistakes in grammar, too frequent use of and, etc. are to be expected. In the pupil's board work, penmanship, and written ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... conjuration from the king,— As England was his faithful tributary; As love between them like the palm might flourish; As peace should still her wheaten garland wear And stand a comma 'tween their amities; And many such-like as's of great charge,— That, on the view and know of these contents, Without debatement further, more or less, He should the bearers put to ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... cord, which aids in fixing this organ to the wall of the canal. The spinal cord is formed by white and gray nerve tissue. The gray tissue is situated within the white, and it is arranged in the form of two lateral comma-shaped columns connected by a narrow commissure of gray matter. The extremities of the lateral gray columns mark the origin of the superior and inferior roots of the spinal nerves. The white tissue of the cord is also divided into lateral portions by superior and median fissures. ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... disdained those who write clearly and luminously, and lost reverence for genius the moment it is understood; since clear writing shows how little is truly original, and makes a disquisition on a bug, a comma, or a date seem ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... it, legalized by notary in the ordinary manner. Such, they said, were the laws of the kingdom, in consideration of the fact that there might be some difference in the books, either by the transposition of a comma, or by some other error that might have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... a compressed form that consists of three columns for 'word', 'definition', and 'additional notes'. It is set up with a comma between each item and a hard return at the end of each definition. This means that this section could easily be cut and pasted into its own text file and imported into a database or spreadsheet as a comma ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... flowering, and that her development will add to those spiritual and intellectual forces of which big-hearted American Judaism stands sorely in need. I should explain in conclusion, that I have neither added nor subtracted, even a comma, and that I have no credit in "discovering" Mary Antin. I did but endorse the verdict of that kind and charming Boston household in which I had the pleasure of encountering the gifted Polish girl, and to a member of which this ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... Habit had enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and he never pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the claim, and added: "You see, stranger," (he addressed the bank before him) "gold is sure to come out'er that theer claim, (he put in a comma with his pick) but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the point of his pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the pick for a period). He was green, and let the boys about here jump him"—and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... busily inditing what McWilliams had termed facetiously billets-doux. Each of them was trying to make his letter a little warmer than friendship allowed without committing himself to any chance of a rebuff. Mac got as far as Nora Darling, absentmindedly inserted a comma between the words, and there stuck hopelessly. He looked enviously across at Bannister, whose pencil was traveling rapidly ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... their particular representative virtue, their quickening force, and, to put it roughly, strike both the familiar and the emphatic note, when those are the notes required, with a felicity beyond either the comma or the semicolon; though indeed a fine sense for the semicolon, like any sort of sense at all for the pluperfect tense and the subjunctive mood, on which the whole perspective in a sentence may depend, seems anything but ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... follows: Chicago, date single space below, regulated so that it will precede and extend beyond "Chicago" an equal distance, the end of date being in line with margin of body of letter; spell the month in full, followed by the date in figures, after which use comma; add year in figures and end ...
— Business Correspondence • Anonymous
... quantite que je leur en voiois prendre; aussi ils s'y accoutumerent des la jeunesse; le jour d'une bataille ils ne s'oublient pas de doubler la dose; cette drogue les anime ou plutot les enyvre, et les rend insensibles an danger, de sorte quils se jettant dans le combat comma des betes furieuses, ne sachant ce que c'est de fuir ... c'est un plaisir de les voir ainsi avec leur fumee d'opium dans la tete s'entre embrasser quand on est pret de combattre et se dire adieu ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... yielded, was quietly pointed out to me. Habit had enabled him to work and talk at the same time, and he never pretermitted either. He gave me a history of the claim, and added: "You see, stranger (he addressed the bank before him), gold is sure to come outer that theer claim (he put in a comma with his pick), but the old pro-pri-e-tor (he wriggled out the word and the point of his pick) warn't of much account (a long stroke of the pick for a period). He was green, and let the boys about here jump him,"—and the rest of his sentence ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... more brief. "Autos go slow" is the warning while on the Fenway in Boston the signs read—"Motor Vehicles, Proceed Slowly." I wouldn't swear to the comma but the words ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... minute to nine Mrs. Clinton came in. She carried a little old-fashioned basket of keys which she put down on the dinner-wagon, exactly in the centre of the top shelf. Cicely came forward to kiss her, followed by Miss Bird, with comma-less inquiries as to how she had spent the night after her journey, and the twins came in through the long window to wish her good morning. She replied composedly to the old starling's twittering, ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... hear and see, when two scribes have been appointed, how at first they praise each other's words, as did Trissotin and Vadius; how gradually each objects to this comma or to that epithet; how from moment to moment their courage will arise,—till at last every word that the other has written is foul nonsense and flat blasphemy;—till Vadius at last will defy his friend in prose and verse, in Greek ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... Laboratory, Browning has penetrated till he seems to breathe with her breath. I question if there is another fictive utterance to surpass this one in authenticity. It bears the Great Seal. Not Shakespeare has outdone it in power and concentration. Every word counts, almost every comma—for, like Browning, we too seem to breathe with this woman's panting breath, our hearts to beat with the very pain and rage of hers, and every pause she comes to in her speech is our pause, so intense is the evocation, so unerring the expression of an impulse which, ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... pas la pretention de m'affubler d'un titre que la mauvaise fortune de mon roi ne me permet pas de porter comma il sied. Je m'appelle, pour vous servir, Blair de Balmile tout court.' [My lord, I have not the effrontery to cumber myself with a title which the ill fortunes of my king will not suffer me to bear the way it should be. I call ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... name their points in writing as we do, that which we cal comma (following the Greek) they cal it alwayes Virgula; our colon, duo puncta; semicolon, punctum cum virgula. When we say nova Linea they say a capite, wt ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder
... Fertur etiam ad Laudecences alia ad Alexandrinos Pauli nomine fincte ad hesem Marcionis el alia plura quae in Catholicam ecclesiam recepi non potest. Perhaps a comma should be put after nomine, and fincte joined to what follows, to the alia plura said to be forged in ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... sources of sulphurous acid were then experimented with, viz., the burning of sulphur, liquefied sulphurous acid, and the burning of sulphide of carbon. The rooms were closed for twenty-four hours, and tubes containing different proto-organisms, and particularly the comma bacillus made known by Koch, were placed therein, along with other tubes containing vaccine lymph. After each experiment these tubes were carried to Mr. Pasteur's laboratory and compared ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... There are a number of instances where the use of the comma in the printed book seems to me inappropriate, mainly in terms of commas inserted where I would not insert them, and also sometimes commas lacking where I would provide them. However, I have adhered to the punctuation as printed (except ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... burned powder had resulted from ambiguity on some point of succession or inheritance or dower rights. Lucas bore it patiently; he didn't want his great-grandchildren and Elaine's shooting it out over a matter of a misplaced comma. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... old system of punctuation may be less defensible, but I have retained it because it may now and then be of use in determining a point of syntax. The absence of a comma, for example, after the word hearse in the 58th line of the Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester, printed by Prof. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... your honour was concerned in your request—requests affecting honour between men comma il faut is a ceremony of course, like a bow between them. One bows, the other returns the bow—no thanks on either side. Now that we have done with that matter, let me say that I thought your wish for our interview originated in ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thrice-blessed thing—and yet—! Having read this over with the greatest attention, taking preposterous heed to every dot and comma, having carefully refolded it, slipped it into the envelope and hidden it upon his person, he raised his eyes to the spotted ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... substantive or adjective? If the latter, no edition is rightly stopped; for, of course, there should be a comma after "massy;" and then I somewhat doubt the propriety of "proof" for "proved," unless joined with another ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... comma after "Ale" in "Method of ascertaining the Quantity of Spirit contained in ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... step in this direction. Most of you in this Chamber didn't know what was in this catchall bill and report. Over the past few weeks, we've all learned what was tucked away behind a little comma here and there. For example, there's millions for items such as cranberry research, blueberry research, the study of crawfish, and the commercialization of wildflowers. And that's not to mention the ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... always knew the Verses were Bad enough to be Wicked, but he never guessed how Yellow they really were until he heard them recited by Little Girls who made the Full Stop at the Comma instead of the Period. He used to lose a Pound a Minute, and when he would start back to the Hotel his Shoes would be Full of Cold Perspiration. Finally, when he began to decline Invitations, against the advice of his Manager, it was said of him that ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... investigation than the chastity of a woman can stand investigation. In such a character, Dr. Wilson would have been bound irrevocably by all his long series of solemn engagements, from the first to the last, without the slightest possibility of dotting an "i" or of cutting off the tail of a comma. It would have been as impossible for him to have repudiated a single one of them at the desire of his friends or in the interest of his idealistic enterprises as it would have been for him to have repudiated it to his ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... punctuation, and again adopted the alteration; he was dubious and irresolute without end, as on a question of the last importance, and at last was seldom satisfied: the intrusion or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single letter as a heavy calamity. In one of his letters relating to an impression of some verses, he remarks, that he had, with regard to the correction of the proof, "a spell upon him;" and indeed the anxiety, with which he ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... of the autumn for the Brownings and for the lovers of English poetry was the publication of Aurora Leigh. Its popularity was instantaneous; within a fortnight a second edition was called for; there was no time to alter even a comma. "That golden-hearted Robert," writes Mrs Browning, "is in ecstasies about it—far more than if it all related to a book of his own." The volume was dedicated to John Kenyon; but before the year was at an end Kenyon was dead. Since the birth of their son he had enlarged the somewhat ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... wrote, "Such monsters as Theseus and Hercules are, renowned throughout all ages for destroying." The learned gentleman obviously meant that Dryden's heroes (whom he accounted tyrants) resembled not the demi-gods, but the monsters whom they destroyed. But the comma is so unhappily placed after are, as to leave the sense capable of the malicious interpretation which Dryden has ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the corrector, beside supplying the stage direction Lay it downe, has added a comma after "hand," substituted a period for the colon after "Art," and a capital for a small w in "wipe." Would a forger do such minute and needless work as this, and do it so carelessly, too, as this one did? for, to make the colon a period, he merely strikes his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... have generally retained those which he retained himself in his second edition, except when they were confuted by subsequent annotators, or were too minute to merit preservation. I have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his atchievement. The exuberant excrescence of his diction I have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have sometimes suppressed, and his contemptible ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... place of the words stricken out insert the words "or any;" strike out all after the word "consent" in line 1 to and including the word "examination" in line 5; strike out the words "for refusing" in line 6; change the period to a comma at the end of line 6 and insert after the comma the words "or to certify him for appointment, or for his removal after appointment." The section as ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... 'but' frequently appears without any punctuation mark before it. At other times it has a comma, a dash, ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... lacustrine seclusion; as chanced also unluckily with the preceding paper, in which the reader will perhaps kindly correct the consequent misprints [now corrected, ED.], p. 203, l. 23, of "scarcely" to "securely," and p. 206, l. 6, "full," with comma to "fall," without one; noticing besides that "Redgauntlet" has been omitted in the list, pp. 198, 199; and that the reference to note should not be at the word "imagination," p. 198, l. 6, but at the word "trade," l. 15. My dear old friend, Dr. John Brown, sends me, from Jamieson's Dictionary, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... thereof) matches the original text. Two minor corrections were made in the following stories: CHARLES'S NEW BOAT (changed the comma after the title to a period) and THE MORN-ING ...
— Little Scenes for Little Folks - In Words Not Exceeding Two Syllables • Anonymous
... their effective arrangement; and second, a knowledge of the established conventions of literature: of spelling; of the common uses of the marks of punctuation,—period, question mark, exclamation point, colon, semicolon, comma; of the common idioms of our language; and of the elements of its grammar. From the beginning of the high school course, the essay, the paragraph, the sentence, the word, are to be studied with special attention to the effective use of each in ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster |
