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I like crisp words like 'blimey', 'yikes', 'crap' which describe consternation, embarrassment, and sometimes wonderment without making me type so many alphabets.

I need to eliminate 'like' from my vocabulary. I begin sentences with, 'That's seriously like... ' I hear myself talking in this Los Angeles high-school student kind of way, and I hate it.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of 'like' has spread through the idiom of the young. And it's true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting 'O.K.' has deposed the more affirmative 'Yes,' so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of 'like' are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

If we do away with semi-colons, parentheses and much else, we will lose all music, nuance and subtlety in communication - and end up shouting at one another in block capitals.

I found a great many pieces of punctuation and typography lying around dormant when I came along - and I must say I had a good time using them.

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

Texting has reduced the number of waste words, but it has also exposed a black hole of ignorance about traditional - what a cranky guy would call correct - grammar.

I get giddy with the idea of stringing words together that make people laugh.

There are words bandied about that are being misused - words like 'socialism,' words like 'communism,' words like 'fascism.'