I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horror of sordid passion and — if he is lucky enough — know the love of an honest woman. – Robert Graves (1895–1985), lecture at Oxford, quoted in Time, 1961 Decembe

The writer who neglects punctuation, or mispunctuates, is liable to be misunderstood for the want of merely a comma, it often occurs that an axiom appears a paradox, or that a sarcasm is converted into a sermonoid. – Edgar Allan Poe

[M]y spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. – A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926

This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put. – Attributed to Winston Churchill, rejecting the rule against ending a sentence wi