The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
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.
An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject and how to avoid them.
The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.
Anybody can have ideas-the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.
The chief virtue that language can have is clarity.
The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.
Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters.
When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.
When you catch an adjective, kill it.
I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English - it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace.
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. Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are, the more necessary it is to be plain.
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my father, brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
People in general would rather die than forgive. It's THAT hard. If God said in plain language. "I'm giving you a choice, forgive or die," a lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
or simply: