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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
Avoid
Word
Language
Use
Writing
Diminutive
Long
Behooves
Never
Superlatives
Oxymoron

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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.
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By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.
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Different regions may require different strategies, as President Bush has noted, but not different basic principles. It's either collective security or selective security.
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Never put the story in the lead. Let 'em have a hot shot of ambiguity right between the eyes.
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Have a definite opinion.
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We are all environmentalists now, but we are not all planetists. An environmentalist realizes that nature has its pleasures and deserves respect. A planetist puts the earth ahead of the earthlings.
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Nobody stands taller than those willing to stand corrected.
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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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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
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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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The wonderful thing about being a New York Times columnist is that it's like a Supreme Court appointment - they're stuck with you for a long time.
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[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.
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Better to be a jerk that knees than a knee that jerks.
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A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.
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After eating, an epicure gives a thin smile of satisfaction a gastronome, burping into his napkin, praises the food in a magazine a gourmet, repressing his burp, criticizes the food in the same magazine a gourmand belches happily and tells everybody where he ate a glutton empraces the white porcelain alter, or more plainly, he barfs.
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Color and bite permeate a language designed to rally many men, to destroy some, and to change the minds of others.
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