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The most fun in breaking a rule is in knowing what rule you're breaking.

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
Breaking
Rule
Fun
Knowing

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Why use a modifier to set straight a not-quite-right noun when the right noun is available?
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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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What a joy it is to see really professional media manipulation.
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English is a stretch language one size fits all.
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Create your own constituency of the infuriated.
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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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Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
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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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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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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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As long as one American is hungry... then we have unfinished business in this country.
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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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I think we have a need to know what we do not need to know.
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When duty calls, that is when character counts.
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Have a definite opinion.
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To communicate, put your words in order give them a purpose use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.
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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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I'm willing to zap conservatives when they do things that are not libertarian.
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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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