Sydney Smith Quotes

I'm tired of wasting letters when punctuation will do, period.

Be prepared to fall out of love with your words. I'm still too verbose at times.

I know I have a problem with semi-colon abuse and have written page-long sentences. Nobody needs to be reading page-long sentences, at least not written by me.

I think in any writing you're paying attention to detail.

One mistake with beginners in writing is, that they think it important to spin out something long. It is a great deal better not to write more than a page or two, unless you have something to say, and can write it correctly.

Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.

The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'

I think in most cases, unless you're writing about a character who is garrulous, you say what you've got to say and then get out. Those little conjunctions, those little turnaround words help you do it. That's the way I like to write: I get rid of things rather than add them.

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table.

To write you have to be able to know how to put words together.

Writing is sometimes a balancing act between keeping things easily readable and being accurate.

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.

Good writing does not come from verbiage but from words.

Most of my work consisted of crossing out. Crossing out was the secret of all good writing.

A good editor understands what you're talking and writing about and doesn't meddle too much.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing - if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

Directing my own writing, I see that I talk way too much, and everything can happen much sooner, with much less said about it.

I found a great many pieces of punctuation and typography lying around dormant when I came along - and I must say I had a good time using them.

You just can't make bad writing look good. But if you have good writing, you just say it, and it's almost done.

If you have to go back and spell-check the text you're about to send, you're saying too much.

Adverbs lead to overwriting. Try taking them out and reading your prose again to see how it sounds. Simple and less words are more powerful.

I still don't know whether I know how to write a sentence.

I am a stickler for damn good writing.