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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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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'
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One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.
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Some handsome and ambitious men believe they are above all morality, and a woman's virtue becomes a mere challenge to them.
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You don't overturn a previous court's decisions lightly and I think most Americans are somewhere in the middle on abortion and there's not going to be a revolution here at all.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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Is sloppiness in speech caused by ignorance or apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
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A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.
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Writers who used to show off their erudition no longer sing in the bare ruined choir of the media.
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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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I'm a right-wing pundit and have been for many years.
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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To be accused of 'channeling' is to be dismissed as a ventriloquist's live dummy, derogated at not having a mind of one's own.
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In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.'
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The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
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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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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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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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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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Cast aside any column about two subjects. It means the pundit chickened out on the hard decision about what to write about that day.
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