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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?

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
Use
Right
Writing
Noun
Nouns
Straight
Available
Quite

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Carter is the best President the Soviet Union ever had.
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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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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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The Republicans do not look on the Democrats as the evil empire.
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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 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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Dangling punch lines to forgotten stories remain in the language like the smile of the Cheshire cat.
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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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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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Have a definite opinion.
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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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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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President Reagan is a rhetorical roundheels, as befits a politician seeking empathy with his audience.
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The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon office reads Scientia Est Potentia - knowledge is power. Exactly: the government's infinite knowledge about you is its power over you.
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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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[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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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.
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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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