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Avoid overuse of 'quotation “marks.”'

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
Overuse
Quotation
Quotations
Marks
Avoid
Mark

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Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: To hell with you. Offensive letter follows.
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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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I welcome new words, or old words used in new ways, provided the result is more precision, added color or greater expressiveness.
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The trick is to start early in our careers the stress-relieving avocation that we will need later as a mind-exercising final vocation. We can quit a job, but we quit fresh involvement at our mental peril.
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If America cannot win a war in a week, it begins negotiating with itself.
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Have a definite opinion.
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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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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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When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
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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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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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In dealing with Syria's dictator...only force counts. No cease-fire was attainable in Lebanon until the 16-inch guns of the battleship New Jersey started shelling Syria's proxies suddenly, sweet reason prevailed in Damascus.
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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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The CEO era gave rise to the CFO (not certified flying object, as you might imagine, but chief financial officer) and, most recently, the CIO, chief investment officer, a nice boost for the bookkeeper you can't afford to give a raise . . .
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Give your main clause a little space. Prose is not like boxing the skilled writer deliberately telegraphs his punch, knowing that the reader wants to take the message directly on the chin.
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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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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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Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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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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