Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.

I never want to confuse people or go over their heads.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

I am not very good at expressing myself in a simple way so it can create mis-understandings and I hate that.

The habit of writing clearly soon comes to the writer who is a severe critic to himself.

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Any one may mouth out a passage with a theatrical cadence, or get upon stilts to tell his thoughts; but to write or speak with propriety and simplicity is a more difficult task. Thus it is easy to affect a pompous style, to use a word twice as big as the thing you want to express; it is not so easy to pitch upon the very word that exactly fits it.

I try to be specific. One thought at a time. Clear. Articulate. And above all, memorable, if you can be. You'd like to write phrases that people can't forget as soon as they read them.

I wish my prose to be transparent—I don't want the reader to stumble over me; I want him to look through what I'm saying to what I'm describing. I don't want him ever to say, Oh, goodness, how nicely written this is. That would be a failure.

A man who writes well writes not as others write, but as he himself writes; it is often in speaking badly that he speaks well.

... when we are misunderstood it is always our own fault. What the reader wants most of all is to be able to grasp what we think; but you loftily refuse to comply.

One should aim not at being possible to understand, but at being impossible to misunderstand.

If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy.

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.

It is not confused. We are.

The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

Being incomprehensible offers unparalleled protection against having nothing to say...but writing with simplicity requires courage, for there is a danger that one will be overlooked, dismissed as simpleminded by those with a tenacious belief that the impassable prose is a hallmark of intelligence.

Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn't mean you've reached them. With reading comprehension being what it is in the U. S., you can safely toss that one out the window. If you want to judge by the listening habits of people who buy records, the first thing they do is put it on and talk over it.

If the reader doesn't understand what you're saying, you're talking to yourself.

a writer's first duty is to be clear. Clarity is an excellent virtue. Like all virtues it can be pursued at ruinous cost. Paid, so far as I am concerned, joyfully.

Be who you are. But be the very best communicator you can possibly be. To do that you must be willing to sacrifice what's comfortable-what has become part of your style-for the sake of what is effective.

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.

Egad, I think the interpreter is the hardest to be understood of the two!

Consistent style prevents presentation from getting in the way of content.

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.