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It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

William Safire

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William Safire
Age: 79 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 17
Died: 2009
Died: September 27
Author
Columnist
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
William Lewis Safire
Never
Superlatives
Oxymoron
Avoid
Word
Language
Use
Writing
Diminutive
Long
Behooves

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Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.
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Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
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Don't expect others to do your work for you.
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You don't want lopsided government. You don't want one side running roughshod over the other.
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I could get a better education interviewing John Steinbeck than talking to an English professor about novels.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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Remember to never split an infinitive. The passive voice should never be used. Do not put statements in the negative form. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. And don't start a sentence with a conjugation.
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The remarkable legion of the unremarked, whose individual opinions are not colorful or different enough to make news, but whose collective opinion, when crystallized, can make history.
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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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If you re-read your work, you can find on re-reading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by re-reading and editing.
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Adapt your style, if you wish, to admit the color of slang or freshness of neologism, but hang tough on clarity, precision, structure, grace.
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Do not be taken in by 'insiderisms.' Fledgling columnists, eager to impress readers with their grasp of journalistic jargon, are drawn to such arcane spellings as 'lede.' Where they lede, do not follow.
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... it's Bush's baby, even if he shares its popularization with Gorbachev. Forget the Hitler 'new order' root F.D.R. used the phrase earlier.
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A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
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The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.
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