In a review of the textbook, a thoughtful professor of journalism remarked that students would know Stephen King, whose advice on writing I included. But when it came to Walt Whitman, also quoted on writing, students would be uncomprehending. I kept Whitman, but I did delete Gertrude Stein's comments about punctuation from the textbook. But on second thought I think they are worth your seeing. So here they are:

When I first began writing, I felt that writing should go on, I still do feel that it should go on but when I first began writing I was completely possessed by the necessity that writing should go on and if writing should go on what had colons and semi-colons to do with it, what had commas to do with it, what had periods to do with it...

What had periods to do with it. Inevitably no matter how completely I had to have writing go on physically one had to again and again stop some time then periods had to exist. Besides I had always liked the look of periods and I liked what they did. Stopping sometimes did not really keep one from going on, it was nothing that interfered, it was only something that happened, and as it happened as a perfectly natural happening, l did believe in periods and I used them. I never really stopped using them.