Eric Partridge

“When we are very young, we tend to regard the ability to use a colon much as a budding pianist regards the ability to play with crossed hands: many of us, when we are older, regard it as a proof of literary skill, maturity, even of sophistication: and many, whether young, not so young, or old, employ it gauchely, haphazardly or, at best, inconsistently.”

“To be mulcted of our money and mutilated of our property is serious enough: to be deprived of our colon would be intolerable.”

“War…next to love, has most captured the world’s imagination” – Eric Partridge, famous lexicographer and author who served in the Australian Imperial Force during WWI”