Linguistic Accuracy Quotes

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Post-'Pellichoopulu,' I received a lot of offers from Tamil industry. I decided I won't do a Tamil film unless I know the language. If I want to do it, I wanted to do it perfectly.

On matters beyond his ken a gentleman speaks with caution. If names are not right, words are misused. When words are misused, affairs go wrong. When affairs go wrong, courtesy and music droop, law and justice fail. And when law and justice fail them, a people can move neither hand nor foot. So a gentleman must be ready to put names in speech, to put words into deeds. A gentleman is nowise careless of words.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.

Let your letter be written as accurately as you are able,--I mean with regard to language, grammar, and stops; for as to the matter of it the less trouble you give yourself the better it will be. Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

Whatever one wishes to say, there is one noun only by which to express it, one verb only to give it life, one adjective only which will describe it. One must search until one has discovered them, this noun, this verb, this adjective, and never rest content with approximations, never resort to trickery, however happy, or to vulgarism, in order to dodge the difficulty.

The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.

I read pretty well in French and Spanish. I don't want to read a book written in French or Spanish in translation.

It is not often that we use language correctly; usually we use it incorrectly, though we understand each others meaning.

... nothing is more human than substituting the quantity of words and actions for their character. But using imprecise words is very similar to using lots of words, for the more imprecise a word is, the greater the area it covers.

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.

The fight against bad English is not frivolous.

Without good grammar, the United States would have lost World War II.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

I find it really difficult when you make a movie where it is set in Russia and everyone speaks in English. It drives me crazy.

Every misused word revenges itself forever upon a writer's reputation.

That's my ultimate goal: to get people to say my name right.

A strange thing, words. Once they're said, it's hard to imagine they're untrue.

If I'm writing, I'll say something metaphorical or approximate, whereas scientists are very precise.

A lot of people probably don't realize how difficult it is to stick to that lawyer speak when you're not a lawyer. I see everyone on 'The Good Wife' - everyone, people who have been there since day one - struggling with that language because it is just not how people talk.

True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.

I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it.

In my work I try to get things right, to do it well, and if there are specific skills involved - like in a case conducting or playing the piano, or in this film I have coming up where I play a character who is German - I'm very meticulous about learning accents and dialects and those kinds of things. That's probably the closest I come to being a perfectionist.

The writing I do makes great demands on translators.