The great logical, or grammatical, framework of language, (for grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason,) he would possess, he knew not how… – Richard Chenevix Trench, “On the Study of Words,” lecture to the pupils of the D

Grammar is politics by other means. – Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 1991

The rules of punctuation seem arbitrary. How can they not, when an apostrophe looks like nothing in this world so much as a comma that can’t keep its feet on the ground? Or when, by simply placing next to that wafting comma its twin, one creates (of all things) a quotation mark? – Richard Lederer and John Shore, Comma Sense: A Fun-damental Guide to Punctuation