Miguel de Cervantes Quotes

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

The understanding between a non-technical writer and his reader is that he shall talk more or less like a human being and not like an Act of Parliament. I take it that the aim of such books must be to convey exact thought in inexact language... he can never succeed without the co-operation of the reader.

There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.

Easy writing makes hard reading.

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.

How well we communicate is determined not by how well we say things but how well we are understood.

The art of saying well what one thinks is different from the faculty of thinking. The latter may be very deep and lofty and far- reaching, while the former is altogether wanting.

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

The shorter and the plainer the better.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

We always speak well when we manage to be understood.

Communication works for those who work at it.

Literary qualifications have no more to do with it than oratory has with salesmanship. One must be able to express himself briefly, clearly, and convincingly, just as a salesman must.

There are two kinds of speeches: the Mother Hubbard speech, which, like the garment, covers everything but touches nothing, and the French bathing suit speech, which covers only the essential points.

Communication is the ability to ensure that people understand not only what you say but also what you mean. It is also the ability to listen to and understand others. Developing both of these aspects of communication takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work.

Whatever we well understand we express clearly, and words flow with ease.

The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing — to be clear.

Clarity is the politeness of the man of letters.

We have to reinvest, I think, in the idea of articulacy as a form of personal human freedom and power.

I counted solely on the clarity of expression of my work to gain my ends.

An orator or author is never successful till he has learned to make his words smaller than his ideas.

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'd come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.