12/24/2022 0 Comments Little do you know quotesNever use a long word when a diminutive one will do. Old words is like old friends, you know ‘em the minute you see ‘em. You don’t understand them and they don’t understand you. I love words but I don’t like strange ones. One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand. Words are like leaves and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found. Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood. The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Good Prose should be transparent-like a window pane. Making the simple complicated is commonplace making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut. Many a poem is marred by a superfluous word. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’ otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away.ĭon’t use words too big for the subject. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. Use familiar words-words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear.īefore using a fine word, make a place for it. The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.ĭo not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.Ī man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit. The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words. The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat. Words-so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become, in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can’t understand them. Whenever we can make 25 words do the work of 50, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish.Īny one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid. You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say. The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.Īny fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain. Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind. When you wish to instruct, be brief that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge.īroadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all. For me that usually means many, many revisions. largely a matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply as possible. King Charles XII of Sweden, commanding his troops in Eastern Europe, 1713 His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil. To simplify complications is the first essential of success. What stuff it all is! Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in a few words. Many famous writers, politicians, and others have commented over the centuries on the importance of writing clearly and briefly.
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