"Comma" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The punctuation marks are the comma, (,), the semicolon, (·), the period, (.), and the interrogation ...
— Greek in a Nutshell • James Strong
... 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 ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... 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 ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... scanned the pages of the log and looked at our accounts with a searching gaze that noted every figure, dot and comma. After a time he ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... 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
... would naturally arise symbolical paintings. Thus "footsteps" might signify the idea of going. A comma-shaped figure, issuing from a person's mouth, would stand for speech. The next step is what we might call rebus-writing, where not the thing itself was meant but the sound. Thus this cut represents ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... 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 ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the trail from the Double-Elm Fork," he said promisingly. "As you crossed it you must have seen an old deserted /jacal/ to your left under a comma mott." ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... because carelessness and fashion combined made it unnecessary for the writer to take the little extra trouble necessary for their separation. Taylor will, in the very middle of his finest passages, and with hardly so much as a comma's break, change oratio obliqua to oratio recta, interrupt the sequence of tenses, make his verbs agree with the nearest noun, irrespective of the connection, and in short, though he was, while in Wales, a schoolmaster for some time, and author of a grammatical treatise, will break Priscian's ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... Replaced comma with a semi-colon after "30" located in the phrase "cut down by Sir ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... 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 to talk to somebody; but she believed she would rather try the ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... minutes," he said. Later on he burst out with, "If my Miss Andrews had been the heroine of that play, the man who falls over the precipice in the second act would have been alive at this moment." And finally he demanded: "Do you suppose a heroine like Marguerite Andrews would have overlooked the comma on the postal card that woman read in the third act, and so made the fourth act possible? Not she. She's a woman with a mind. And yet they call that the latest London realistic success! Realistic! These Londoners do not ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... 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
... whole force in its entirety. So with Butcher's punctuation. But it is perhaps better to place a comma after [Greek: dynamin], and translate, 'after making ready ... soldiers, ships, cavalry—the entire force complete—you ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes
... supernatural character to things ordinary and familiar: the second stating as the result of this, "that we make trifles of terrors," whereas the tendency would necessarily be to make "terrors of trifles." The confusion arises from the careless pointing of the first sentence. By simply shifting the comma at present after "things," and placing it after "familiar," the discrepancy between the two sentences disappears, as also between the two members of the first sentence, which are now at variance. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... 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 ...
— McGuffey's Third Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... notes I 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 achievement. The exuberant excrescence of diction I have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over Pope and Rowe I have sometimes ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... inconsistent 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 and ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... is very inconsistent in referring to this passage.—'Sibbe' (154), which H.-So. regards as an instr., B. takes as accus., obj. of 'wolde.' Putting a comma after Deniga, he renders: He did not desire peace with any of the Danes, nor did he wish to remove their life-woe, nor to settle ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... twins longed to engage her, if only to keep her quiet; but Mrs. Bilton's spirited description of life as she saw it and of the way it affected something she called her psyche, was without punctuation and without even the tiny gap of a comma in it through which one might have dexterously slipped a definite offer. She had to be interrupted at last, in spite of the discomfort this gave to the Twinkler and Twist politeness, because a cook was coming to be interviewed ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... Tung-to-hsia replaced with Tung-lo-hsia | | Page 44: Chung-king replaced with Chungking | | Page 47: Fuh-kien replaced with Fuhkien | | Page 57: rape seed replaced with rape-seed | | Page 58: mainroad replaced with main road | | Page 61: Comma after "Chinese, who," removed | | Page 62: tow-rope replaced with towrope | | Page 63: Tali-fu replaced with Talifu | | Page 64: trop materialistes italicised | | Page 69: ling-chi replaced with Ling chi | | Page 76: Semi-colon following Chaotong replaced ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... and to invoke that deity by means of orthodox incantations is to run the risk of hell fire. Editors may punctuate afresh the text of Shakespeare with impunity, and perhaps even with advantage; but add a comma to the text of Blake, and you put all Heaven in a rage. You have laid your hands upon the Ark of the Covenant. Nor is this all. When once, in the case of Blake, the slightest deviation has been made from the authoritative ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... book I have I am not able to say whether he would have used capitals before proper names I have inserted them as usual for which I hope his spirit will forgive me if I be wrong he also published the elements of geometry in two volumes quarto Cambridge 1815 this book had also no stops except when a comma was wanted between letters as in the straight lines AB, BC I should also say that though the title is unpunctuated in the author's part it seems the publishers would not stand it in their imprint this imprint is punctuated as usual and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... Corps. A department which deals out supplies to the troops. Its chief asset is the returning of requisitions because a comma is misplaced. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... following misprints have been corrected: Comma added at end of verse line "the powder" (page 31) Period removed in sentence "three's, thus. one" (page 122) "hocky" corrected to "hockey" (page 139) "payments" corrected to "pavements" (page 145) "hankerchief" corrected to "handkerchief" (Img ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... identified by Koch in 1883 (see PARASITIC DISEASES). For some years it was called the "comma bacillus," from its supposed resemblance in shape to a comma, but it was subsequently found to be a vibrio or spirillum, not a bacillus. The discovery was received with much scepticism in some quarters, and the claim of Koch's vibrio to be the true cause of cholera was long disputed, but is now ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... of Louis XIII. His mouth was almost without lips, which Lavater deems an indubitable sign of an evil mind, and it was framed in a pair of slight gray moustaches and a 'royale'—an ornament then in fashion, which somewhat resembled a comma in form. The old man wore a close red cap, a large 'robe-dechambre', and purple silk stockings; he was no less a personage than Armand Duplessis, Cardinal ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... 6 - 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 ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... our times,—although the pedants have always 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 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... imperil perhaps the 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 Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... after a vowel sound, a momentary arrest is produced in the breath-flow, and this has its corresponding effect on the mind. It is, in fact, equivalent to a pause—say a comma or a period. If introduced before a vowel, it is marked off in a more definite way. The effect of this is to enable the ear the better to grasp the sounds. There is the principle of differentiation and the principle ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... spiral denotes the rolling of thunder from which issues a flash of lightning".[167] De Visser discusses this question at some length and refers to Hirth's claim that the Chinese triquetrum, i.e., the well-known three-comma shaped figure, the Japanese mitsu-tomoe, the ancient spiral, represents thunder also.[168] Before discussing this question, which involves the consideration of the almost world-wide belief in a thunder-weapon and its relationship to the spiral ornament, the octopus, the pearl, the swastika and ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... transcript may have been carelessly made, but having got his line right in his first draft, Keats probably did not spoil it in his second. The Athenaeum version inserts a comma after art in the last line, which seems to me a decided improvement, and eminently characteristic of Keats's method. I am glad to see that Mr. Buxton ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... to give me taste by inoculation. I am sure he has a charming one; and he illustrates every thing he says about gardening by some literary or grammatical allusion. He told me he compared his art to literary composition. 'Now, there,' said he, pointing his finger, 'I make a comma; and there,' pointing to another spot, 'where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon: at another part (where an interruption is desirable to break the view), a parenthesis—now a full stop; and then I begin another subject.'" Memoirs, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... there was a direction to omit the comma after may, and to change here into hear. In Masson's text, accordingly, he reads: "And hearken, if ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... This verse-rendering of 'Maecenas' is by Wordsworth, not Camden—the quotation from whom here ought to have been marked with an inverted comma ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... remember that you can't slip the Idylls of the King in between the Black-faced Comedian and the Elephant Act. I suppose I must just bear it, grinning if possible, until I have won my footing and then I won't allow so much as a comma ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... haue in this rough worke, shap'd out a man Whom this beneath world doth embrace and hugge With amplest entertainment: My free drift Halts not particularly, but moues it selfe In a wide Sea of wax, no leuell'd malice Infects one comma in the course I hold, But flies an Eagle flight, bold, and forth ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... by a woman of fairly slim proportions round the waist and hips it will be exceedingly successful, but she who inclines towards the portly should rigidly ignore the charms of the jacket with the belt." Unless this sentence has a comma after "well," it bears a meaning quite different from what the writer intended; it needs also a comma after "hips" ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... our only chance to get in a word. We have to insert its thin edge at a comma, or else keep still. You never have any conversational semicolons, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... a partial 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 five or so million ($.5 million) ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... 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 ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... poem of mine called "The First Message," also in Gall's edition, was sent over by telegraph to America. What a miserable muddle, by the way, those meddlesome revisers have made of The Angel's Message;—preferring a dubious sigma to a comma, they have utterly spoilt that sublime trilogy by making "Peace upon earth, goodwill towards men," read "Peace upon earth among men in whom he is well pleased." How clumsy and how ungrammatical, ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Replaced period with a comma after "Jones" located in phrase "Pearson, captain, yields to ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... with a very unimportant point, I observe that the Leipsic Teubner edition of 894 makes Books ii. and iii. end with a comma. Stops are things of such far more recent date than the "Odyssey," that there does not seem much use in adhering to the text in so small a matter; still, from a spirit of mere conservatism, I have preferred to do so. Why [Greek] at ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... don't know what is!" exclaimed Cadbury, when it was read through. "If ink was a shilling a drop, you couldn't have been more chary of it. There's not an 'a', 'an', or 'the' throughout, nor a comma, nor an adjective, and the contractions are masterly. We're all born commercial clerks, ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... she knew that this was monstrously absurd. All the time she knew that she did not wish to marry this man. Fine sentences, pompously framed, slowly formed in her mind such as: "This outrage will not go unpunished, comma, and you will suffer for this, comma, ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... pouting. I can say that as well as you can. And you don't mind your stops. For you ought to stop twice as long at a semicolon as you do at a comma, and you make the longest stops where there ought to be ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... Page 98: 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
... 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 was confided to his ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... and intelligence know that all the ills of life—scarcity of money, baldness, the comma bacillus, Home Rule, ... and the Potato Bug—are due to the Sherman Bill. If it is repealed, sin and death will vanish from the world, ... the skies will fall, and we ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... somewhat uncomfortable at this exuberance, accompanied with a formal bow for every comma, but is probably used to it, for she quietly made me a sensible little speech of welcome, to which I responded ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... BNFs, covering the case of people who use multiple first and middle names and/or initials). A street address consists of an optional apartment specifier, followed by a street number, followed by a street name. A zip-part consists of a town-name, followed by a comma, followed by a state code, followed by a ZIP-code followed by an end-of-line." Note that many things (such as the format of a personal-part, apartment specifier, or ZIP-code) are left unspecified. These are presumed ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... surely 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
... speech is 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 ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... and when the rest of the suitors had either declined the contest, or made such work as the devil could not read if his pardon depended on it, all eyes were bent on the stranger. Aldobrand stepped gracefully forward, arranged the types without omission of a single letter, hyphen, or comma, imposed them without deranging a single space, and pulled off the first proof as clear and free from errors, as if it had been a triple revise! All applauded the worthy successor of the immortal Faustusthe blushing maiden acknowledged her error in trusting ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... x—changed period to comma after "Ale" in "Method of ascertaining the Quantity of Spirit contained ...
— A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons • Fredrick Accum
... 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 in trousers ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... of William Ewart Gladstone's Home Rule bill of 1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket, no 2004, of S. Kevin's Charity Fair, price 6d, 100 prizes: an infantile epistle, dated, small em monday, reading: capital pee Papli comma capital aitch How are you note of interrogation capital eye I am very well full stop new paragraph signature with flourishes capital em Milly no stop: a cameo brooch, property of Ellen Bloom (born Higgins), deceased: a cameo scarfpin, property of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag), deceased: ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... time is expended in making certain that commas are properly distributed. Thomas Campbell walked six miles to a printer's to have a comma in one of his poems ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... paragraph 82. A comma was changed to a semi-colon in the sentence: This was on a Tuesday; on the Wednesday he did not speak to her on ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... peas abandoned by the weevils. Does this actually mean that there are several grubs in the pea? Yes. Skin the peas in question, separate the cotyledons, and break them up as may be necessary. We shall discover several grubs, extremely youthful, curled up comma-wise, fat and lively, each in a little round niche in ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... you understand the letters, I will explain the other little marks you see in this book. They are called stops: there are six different ones, the comma, which is the shortest; the semicolon;—the colon:—the period.—the note of admiration!—which denotes wonder or surprise—and the note of interrogation? which shews that a question is asked. ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley
... a full-grown, two yard-long moondog. He looked like an oversized comma of something vague and luminous. At the head end he was a fat yellow balloon, and the rest of him tapered vaguely to a blunt apex of infinity. Whatever odd forces composed his weird physiology, he was undoubtedly electronic ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... to comma after warriors (Ah, no more such noble warriors. Could be found on earth ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... of them small republics which is going to make a play for a little easy money, Mawruss," Abe said, "but the indications is that when the proofs of claims is filed by the alleged creditors, y'understand, there would be a couple of them comma hounds on the Reparation Committee which would reject such claims on the grounds of misplaced semicolons alone. Then six months hafterwards, when the representative of one of them republics goes over to what ...
— Potash and Perlmutter Settle Things • Montague Glass
... whiteness with writing like light. I understand of what a great 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
... 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... amphibian, and, as such, undeniably beautiful; for the sunlight, refracted and diffused in the water, gave his translucent, pearl-blue body all the shifting colors of the spectrum. Vigorous and graceful of movement, in shape he resembled a comma of three dimensions, twisted, when at rest, to a slight spiral curve; but in traveling he straightened out with quick successive jerks, each one sending him ahead a couple of lengths. Supplemented by the undulatory movement of a long continuation of his tail, it was his way ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... Changed full stop to comma Vol. I—Page 185, line 18 facts were known to the entire diocese." After this there ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... Voltaire.—They say it ennuyes them to read; and I observe, that those who read at all, take their books into the garden, and prefer the most crowded walks. These studious persons, who seem to surpass Crambe himself in the faculty of abstraction, smile and bow at every comma, without any appearance of derangement from such ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... idea, is the sum of the evils arising 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
... Rankin without perceiving the satirical note. "Now there's De Maupassant's Fort comma la Mort—quite the most interesting variation—shows the turn a genius can give. There the triangle is the man of middle age, the mother he has loved in his youth and the daughter he comes to ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... blow at them to get rid of them—blow harder and harder; to no purpose, the little pests throw themselves on their backs, make themselves heavy, and fight against me until their slender legs bend. They are not to be moved from the spot; they find something to hook on to, set their heels against a comma or an unevenness in the paper, or stand immovably still until they themselves think fit to ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... money. It cannot be bought or sold; it 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 ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... I think Coleridge's nice ear would have blamed the nearness of enemy and calamity in this passage. Mr. Masson leaves out the comma after If not, the pause of which is needful, I think, to the sense, and certainly to keep not a little farther ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... close follows the body of the letter, about two or three spaces below it. It begins about in the center of the page under the body of the letter. Only the first word should be capitalized and a comma is placed at the end. The wording may vary according to the degree of cordiality or friendship. In business letters the forms are usually ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... assurance of 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 ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... 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 ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele
... things. A little thing in this great big age is too insignificant. Yet, we are told it was the cackling of a goose that saved Rome; the cry of a babe in the bull-rushes gave a law-giver to the Jews; the kick of a cow caused the great Chicago fire; the omission of a comma in preparing a bill that passed Congress cost this republic a half million dollars; while the ignoring of a comma in reading a church notice cost a minister quite a bit of embarrassment. Among his announcements was one which ran thus: "A husband ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... to the Revision Committee it was found that in one section there was a period where there should have been a comma. Mrs. Almy was obliged to remain two weeks and get an amendment through both Houses to correct this error. Finally the resolution was declared perfect, and was ordered published throughout the State, etc. Then it was discovered that the word "resident" ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... like things new and primarily our own. We have a wholesome instinct against infection, except, it seems, in the matter of ideas. An authorling will deliberately inoculate his copy with the inverted comma bacillus, till the page swims unsteadily, counting the fever a glow of pure literary healthiness. Yet this reproduction, rightly considered, is merely a proof that his appetite for books has run beyond his ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... effectual: he threatened to commence the insurrection with his friends in the city alone; and he boasted, that he had ten thousand brisk boys, as he called them, who, on a motion of his finger, were ready to fly to arms. Monmouth*[**missing comma] Russel, and the other conspirators, were during some time in apprehensions lest despair should push him into some dangerous measure; when they heard that, after a long combat between fear and rage, he had at last abandoned all hopes of success, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... the right epithet for a telltale, who flatters you into 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
... The Comma is the shortest pause; as, Jane goes to school', and learns to read. Pause the time of counting one, and ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... 631, comma changed to semi-colon on "bills of credit;" to match rest of list. Also on ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... the Huns. Long afterwards a stone was found with the inscription Ursula et Undecimilla Virgines, which was incorrectly translated into 'Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins.' Some later critic pointed out that a missing comma after Undecimilla, the name of a handmaid, made all the difference, assuming that two young ladies were a more reasonable and probable number than eleven thousand. But what legend ever cared for a comma, or reached a full stop? If you go to Cologne, the verger of the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... "congregation" (Gemeinde). Following Erasmus he turned [Greek] metanoieite (Matthew iii, 2, 8) into "bessert euch" ("improve yourselves") instead of "tut Busse" ("do penance") as in the older German versions. Also, following the Erasmian text, he omitted the "comma Johanneum" (I John v, 7); this was first insinuated into the ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... 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 ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... his stuff, and it seems to me the perfection of the felicitous expression of the inane. Why, he is no more than a ponderous bromide, thanks to Gelett Burgess. And Praps is no better. His 'Hemlock Mosses,' for instance is beautifully written. Not a comma is out of place; and the tone—ah!—is lofty, so lofty. He is the best-paid critic in the United States. Though, Heaven forbid! he's not a critic at all. They do criticism ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... sheets was one of Mr. Savage's peculiarities: he often altered, revised, recurred to his first reading or 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 ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... 774. The sense of this passage is spoilt in L. and P. by the comma being placed after "better" instead ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... I am the most useless of servants that the sun of royal favor ever shone upon. Yes, truly, I am a poor, modest, trifling, good-for-nothing creature; and if his majesty did not allow me, from time to time, to read his verses and rejoice in their beauty, and here and there to add a comma, I should be as useless a being as that Catholic priest stationed at Dresden, at the court of King Augustus, who has nothing to do—no man or woman to confess—there, as here, every man being a Lutheran. Algarotti ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... may be caused in quite a different manner. I have often speculated as to what advantage the brilliant white C could give to the otherwise dusky-coloured "Comma butterfly" (Grapta C. album). Poulton's recent observations ("Proc. Ent. Soc"., London, May 6, 1903.) have shown that this represents the imitation of a crack such as is often seen in dry leaves, and is very conspicuous because the light ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... 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 not ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... 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 ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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
... illustrations (starting with "No. 1.—STEM STITCH") have been made consistent with the later illustrations, by the removal of the word Illustration and a comma at the beginning of each of ...
— Handbook of Embroidery • L. Higgin
... 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 text upon ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... inserted a comma after "sprained ankle" — there is a small comma-sized gap at the end of the line where a comma appears to have ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... notification of 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
... is 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 ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... "'You have never failed to respond to such an appeal,' comma; no, semicolon; no, period. 'So I shall put you down for a subscription of dash 'how much' question-mark. 'Thanking you in adv'—no, just say, 'My husband joins me in kindest regards to your dear wife and yourself, cordially yours'—and that will ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... Abbey's dark Scriptorium brought, See vellum tomes by Monkish labour wrought; Nor yet the comma born, Papyri see, And uncial letters wizard grammary; View my fifteeners in their rugged line; What ink! what linen! only known long syne— Entering where ALDUS might have fixed his throne, Or ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... beggarly cousin with the frowzy wig had prevailed upon her family and broken off the match, then my mother would not have married my father, and I should at this moment be an unborn possibility in a philosopher's brain. It is right that I should pick my words most carefully, and meditate over every comma, because I am describing miracles too great for careless utterance. If I had died after my first breath, my history would still be worth recording. For before I could lie on my mother's breast, the earth had to be prepared, and the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... these keys to you as commanding officer. If his Honor has a copy of the EXACT FORM OF WORDS, and will favor the publick with it, we shall be able to judge where the difference is, and whether in our opinion it is MATERIAL. Perhaps the words according to the Charter which I observe are commad in his Honors reply as emphatical, are omitted by Mr. Hall: But if THEY are a part of the FORM OF WORDS, the house seem to have fully taken them up by affirming that his Honor has no authority either BY THE CHARTER or his commission to delegate the power of garrisoning the Castle ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... with the thought.... Still, with all this haste, nothing could exceed the scrupulous care he took with his finished manuscript. He once wired from Cincinnati to his publisher in New York instructions to change a comma in his current sermon to a semicolon. He had detected the error while reading proof ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... skilfully freed the church from this "confusion of words." His holiness, on one occasion, standing in equal terror of the court of France, who protected the Jesuits, and of the court of Spain, who maintained the cause of the Dominicans, contrived a phrase, where a comma or a full stop, placed at the beginning or the end, purported that his holiness tolerated the opinions which he condemned; and when the rival parties despatched deputations to the court of Rome to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... what Matthew says of our SAVIOUR's having risen 'in the end of the Sabbath.' For Mark's expression, ('Now when He was risen early the first day of the week,') we shall read with a pause, putting a comma after 'Now when He was risen,'—the sense of the words which follow being kept separate. Thereby, we shall refer [Mark's] 'when He was risen' to Matthew's 'in the end of the Sabbath,' (for it was then that He rose); and all that comes after, expressive as it is ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... young thief!" said the indignant owner of the study; "I'll teach you to stick your finger in my jam. What do you mean by it?" and a cuff served as a comma between each sentence. ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... 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
... to that, as we see, even in this little jingle of rhymes, put in apparently, only for professional purposes, and merely to get the curtain down decently. It is a point, which it takes the key of the play—Lord Bacon's key, of 'Times,' to put in. It wants but a comma, but then it must be a comma in the right place, to make English of it. Plain English, unvarnished English, but poetic in its fact, as any prophecy that ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... it in the Fire to free 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 ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle
... fulminis vicem de caelo improvisa, simul. Van der Vliet places a comma after vicem and gives ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... is "proof,"—a 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 word, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... stenographer, and said (in Spanish, in which tongue, it may be observed, it sounded even better than in the English rendering): "And so the gentle doves of peace comma pursued down stormy skies by the hawks of war comma shall find at length ... shall find at length.... Alvarez, please finish that sentence later on. That will do for the present, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... a comma," the Dominican put in,—"unaccompanied ladies do not ordinarily drop from the forest oaks like acorns. I said as much to Cazaio a half-hour ago. Look you, we two and Michault,—who formerly incited ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... in his Political Biography of Lord George Bentinck, quotes this passage, and, as it seems to me, manipulates it unfairly, by ending it at the word "decimated," as if there were a full stop there, whereas the sense in the original only requires a comma, and so it is in Hansard. To make the sense terminate at "decimated," he moulds a sentence and a half into one, thus: "The Chief Secretary says, that the ministers did wisely in this decision, but I differ from him when I hear, every day, of persons being starved to death, and when he, himself, ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... corroboration would take months more of comparison and classification. But at the end of the vista victory loomed. The Professor felt within himself that assurance of ultimate justification which, to the man of science, makes a life-time seem the mere comma between premiss and deduction. But he had reached the point where his conjectures required formulation. It was only by giving them expression, by exposing them to the comment and criticism of his associates, that he could test their final value; and this inner assurance was confirmed by the ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... poetry quoted by the author. The last line appears to be missing some punctuation—a closing single-quote mark at the end and possibly a comma after "whispered". The author's original text has been preserved—the missing punctuation could have been intentional if he had, for example, been quoting verbatim from his source. (And whispered 'Thou thyself art ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... 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 little volume is ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... things I cannot agree with him, especially not as regards the marks of punctuation, by means of which he tries to distinguish himself from you, when at the end of the pamphlet he exclaims: "Wagner says, OPERA NOT,—DRAMA; I say OPERA, NOT DRAMA." His "Komala" is better than his comma, and his practice much better than his theory. There is much in it that would please you, and has undoubtedly been originated by "Lohengrin." Sobolewski wrote "Komala" at first in three acts, and had it done in that form at Bremen. Afterwards, in ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... be more perfectly in keeping with all other manifestations of Washington than the whole visible aspect and embodiment of this letter. The manuscript is as clear as daylight; the punctuation exact, to a comma. There is a calm accuracy throughout, which seems the production of a species of intelligence that cannot err, and which, if we may so speak, would affect us with a more human warmth, if we could ...
— A Book of Autographs - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Epistles of Quintus, Horatius, Flaccus. commas in original That we make something to discourse upon further text reads "discoure" U. True, dew, Hugh, neuter, give, you, gaol, jaylor, goal, John ... text unchanged: erroneous comma after "give" and missing line break ...
— Magazine, or Animadversions on the English Spelling (1703) • G. W.
... with a beatific grin. "Why, there's a comma after that word 'diversion.' I've just come from the City Hall. I've seen the original copy. There is a comma. 'Any manner of diversion'—that's one thing: 'or any manner of profane occupation for profit—' that's something else again, and different entirely. And the Reform League has been ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... - Added a missing comma on page 111, third sentence - Fixed typo ("tomorow"), page ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to 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
... breve [a] a with macron [c] quatrillo, resembles a 4 with a tail [c,] quatrillo with comma [t] tresillo, resembles a reversed 3 [tz] resembles ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... 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 separated variable file (.csv ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... nothing of this verse: the obscurity is not at all removed by putting a comma after 'rules.' ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... blue bag over his shoulder and a notebook and pencil-stump in his hand. He nodded to the assistant as to an old friend with whom one may be at ease, set down his bag, opened his notebook, and nibbled his stump. Then he read aloud, with a comma or semicolon between each, a dozen or twenty titles. They were the names of the books which his employer wished to pick up. The red-eyed assistant listened, and shook his head. Then the boy, without another word, shouldered his bag and ...
— In Luck at Last • Walter Besant
... 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
... grew hot and embarrassed, and was at a loss how to reply. He need not have troubled himself, however, for Cornelia continued her exposition touching the superiority of American everything, over the miserable imitations of other countries, with hardly as much as a comma's pause for breath. ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Returns the ingredients of, &c.; and, after the word returns is placed a comma; which, however, I suppose to be a press oversight, and no element in the correction. Meantime, I see no call for any change whatever. The ordinary use of the word commend, in any advantageous introduction of a stranger by letters, seems here to maintain ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... by the presence of a microbe, known as the "comma bacillus," which manufactures a virulent poison, called a ptomaine. Although the germs are taken into the system through the medium of the mouth and stomach, they only multiply in the bowels, which is proved by the fact that the vomit from a cholera patient contains none, ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... 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
... 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 ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... p. 11. l. 23. —in thy mind if thou couldst choose. (At the close full stop misprinted for comma). Varuna, the god of waters. Schlegel and Rosen consider that a sloka, describing the attributes of Varuna, has been lost—that in this line 'varanam, seligendum' should be written instead of 'Varunam.' The Calcutta edition has the same reading, ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... satis esse vobis: Bait. follows Madv. in placing a comma after est, and a full stop at probabilia. Tamen ought in that case to follow dicimus, and it is noteworthy that in his communication to Halm (printed on p. 854 of Bait., and Hahn's ed. of the philosophical ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... forms. They may be a wedge-shaped stroke sloping in any direction, a horizontal dash, a tiny circle or semicircle, a small v, or a perfect dot. Examine them all through the glass, and compare them with the comma, which often partakes of the same character as the dot. Note also its relative position to the shank, whether vertical, to the right or left, and its average height and distance from the shank. Much may be learned from a careful examination of the dot, and its ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... storms must have rocked and heaved and rent and tortured the earth and after all had passed by, the hurricane of volcanic fire and missiles must have scattered the debris of high mountains twisted into lumps of matter, varying in size from a sky scraper to a comma. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... the punctuation of the Pisan edition, with a colon after 'his own,' and a semicolon after 'sorrow.' It appears to me however that the sense would rather require either a full stop after 'his own,' and a comma after 'sorrow,' or else a comma after 'his own,' and a full stop or colon after 'sorrow.' Yet it is possible that the phrase, 'As in the accents,' &c., forms a separate clause by itself, meaning, 'As if in the accents of an unknown land, he sang ...
— Adonais • Shelley |
