Stephen Leacock Quotes

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

You cannot teach somebody to write a masterpiece, but you can certainly teach them how to improve their writing skills. And you can teach them that they can make their own voices more effective by being able to communicate more clearly and forcefully. It makes people feel more capable when they can write - for instance to make a request - of a politician - and when they are able to receive a reply.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

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

An author arrives at a good style when his language performs what is required of it without shyness.

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.

Whatever I'm doing, I try to write well. I try to give the reader a nice, clean well-written surface, where the writing is transparent. It probably takes me longer to write things, but it's very important to me that the writing itself be good.

Of writing well the source and fountainhead is wise thinking.

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.

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader's mind - -vividly, forcefully.

Like with anything, good writing suggest itself pretty strongly.

It's important to look ahead, I think, to shape your stuff for - again - effect. Because it's just so easy to write long, flowy sentences, get lost in them. The hard part's making them matter, making yourself make them matter.

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.

Writing well is at one and the same time good thinking, good feeling, and good expression; it is having wit, soul, and taste, all together.

Good writing can be defined as having something to say and saying it well. When one has nothing to say, one should remain silent. Silence is always beautiful at such times.

You will have written exceptionally well if, by skilful arrangement of your words, you have made an ordinary one seem original.

When talented people write badly, it's generally for one of two reasons: Either they're blinded by an idea they feel compelled to prove of they're driven by an emotion they must express. When talented people write well, it is generally for this reason: They're moved by a desire to touch the audience.

Sound judgment is the ground of writing well.

Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.

The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. Because I have the greatest respect for the reader, and if he's going to the trouble of reading what I've written -- I'm a slow reader myself and I guess most people are -- why, the least I can do is make it as easy as possible for him to find out what I'm trying to say, trying to get at. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear.

Anything works, as long as you write it properly.

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

What is conceived well is expressed clearly.