William Strunk Jr. Quotes

There is no good word for stomach; just as there is no good word for girlfriend. Stomach is to girlfriend as belly is to lover, and as abdomen is to consort, and as middle is to petite amie.

Literally' - I'm not having it; people can't go around saying 'literally.' Otherwise, what's literal? There's not another word for literally: if it isn't figurative or metaphorical, what is it? It's literal: there's no substitute.

One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.

All the elements of good writing depend on the writer's skill in choosing one word instead of another.

To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.

Before, prior to. There is no difference between these two except length and a certain affectedness on the part of 'prior to.' To paraphrase Bernstein, if you would use 'posterior to' instead of 'after,' then by all means use 'prior to' instead of 'before.

DIAPHRAGM, n. A muscular partition separating disorders of the chest from disorders of the bowels.

Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

I'm just very careful with my words when I write. Obsessively careful. I'm the sort of person who worries about the difference between "slim" and "slender."

The sound of words in a novel is a pretty amazing thing, and I am concerned with the sound of every word I write.

The more words you have at your disposal, the more precisely you can express yourself.

When you're selling a product or service, you don't have - it doesn't have to be absolutely perfect, although I've provided language that is. When you're a politician, one wrong word changes the entire - changes the meaning of something.

I don't like this official/unofficial distinction. It sound, er, officious.

And the good writer chooses his words for their 'meaning', but that meaning is not a a set, cut-off thing like the move of knight or pawn on a chess-board. It comes up with roots, with associations, with how and where the word is familiarly used, or where it has been used brilliantly or memorably.

So in writing, there is always a right word, and every other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in words except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head.

Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear. Before using a fine word, make a place for it.

... the stomach is near the heart and one appetite pricks on another.

So many vaginas, stomachs, cocks, snouts, and flies you don't know what to do with them ... shovelsfull! ... but hearts? ... very rare! in the last five hundred million years too many cocks and gastric tubes to count ... but hearts? ... on your fingers!.

If you use a colloquialism or a slang word or phrase, simply use it; do not draw attention to it by enclosing it in quotation marks. To do so is to put on airs, as though you were inviting the reader to join you in a select society of those who know better.

Less depends upon the choice of words than upon this, that their introduction shall be justified by pregnant theorems.

If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words.

Every word has its fragrance: there is a harmony and a disharmony of fragrances, and hence of words.

. . . children - not kids. Kids are goats. I've always spoken of my children as children.

Words are very much my thing. I'm very picky and choosy with them. So, I kind of edit myself to the point of, almost stumping myself, sometimes.

Here is the piece. If you can't say fornicate can you say copulate or if not that can you say co-habit? If not that would have to say consummate I suppose. Use your own good taste and judgment.