And––to follow up on our discussions about short words and zombie nouns––a few choice words regarding word choice:
“Compensation and remuneration say
nothing that pay does not say better. Gift is
more to the point than donation. Room will
beat accommodation every time, as try will
defeat endeavor. On the other hand, interface, parameter,
viable, finalize and prioritize are typical of the
voguish words that mask, rather than reveal, what it is we want to say.”–– Alden S. Wood
“Intermingling Saxon
words with Latin ones gives language variety, texture, euphony, and vitality.
The best writers match substance with form. They use language precisely,
evocatively, even daringly. So we shouldn’t assume that Hemingwayan spartanism
is the only desirable mode, unless we’re ready to indict T.S. Eliot, H.L.
Mencken, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Edmund Wilson, and many another
masterly writer*”––Bryan Garner
(*including
plenty of well-known women writers such as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Toni Morrison, and Rebecca Solnit)
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