Syntax Quotes

I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.

When you translate poetry in particular, you're obliged to look at how the writer with whom you're working puts together words, sentences, phrases, the triple tension between the line of verse, the syntax and the sentence.

I ascribe a basic importance to the phenomenon of language. To speak means to be in a position to use a certain syntax, to grasp the morphology of this or that language, but it means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

What that book does for me is give me the tools in the same way that I had the tools when I learned the regular scales or the alphabet. If you give me the tools, the syntax, and the grammar, it still doesn't tell me how to write Ulysses.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

My favorite language for maintainability is Python. It has simple, clean syntax, object encapsulation, good library support, and optional named parameters.

The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.

The pull between sound and syntax creates a kind of musical tension in the language that interests me.

And that's how I start myself. I usually go back a couple of pages, maybe to the beginning of the chapter, and I start reading. And as I'm reading, I'm tweaking - putting in a different word, changing the syntax, putting that clause over there, you know that sort of thing.