Mark Twain Quotes

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

[Presently, science undergraduates] do not learn to write clearly and briefly, marshalling their points in due and aesthetically satisfying order, and eliminating inessentials. They are inept at those turns of phrase or happy analogy which throw a flying bridge across a chasm of misunderstanding and make contact between mind and mind.

Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them.

I think that as you learn more about writing you learn to be direct.

The shorter and the plainer the better.

Writing for me is cutting out the fat and getting to the meaning.

Minimalism has a connotation of being reductive, and not in the best way. 'Brevetist' is a better term. I'm trying to be as concise as possible and still getting across to the reader. When information is delivered in that way, it is very satisfying to me.

In a newspaper, you only have so much room. It teaches you the value of getting to the point, of not pampering yourself with your glorious writing. I've always been much more interested in one powerful sentence that stays with you. That's my style.

I'm not an angry person. When I write, the lawyer in me tries to make it as easy to read as possible.

However old-fashioned and right-wing this may sound, the American genius for language lies in understatement, in saying things simply, pointedly and quickly, and in making new and clean and swift what otherwise might be ponderous, round and slow.

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Aim for brevity while avoiding jargon.

Wordiness is a sickness of American writing. Too many words dilute and blur ideas.

He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.

I cannot write long books; I leave that for those who have nothing to say.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

To make yourself understood you have to think plain and write plain.

I thought clarity of communication was the most important thing in writing, and if you really cared about getting your idea across, you would say it in the most straightforward way possible. Later, in college and grad school, I came to realize that language is a technology like any other, and that it's always evolving - clarity of expression is always evolving.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his reader is sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and we want downright facts at present more than anything else.

You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.

Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count.

To get the right word in the right place is a rare achievement. To condense the diffused light of a page of thought into the luminous flash of a single sentence, is worthy to rank as a prize composition just by itself...Anybody can have ideas--the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position.