Grammar is a piano I play by ear.
One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.
And you bring your words, But you're just like them, You're unprepared 'Cause you don't know the terrain
I go through phases where I'll overuse words. S.E. Hinton, who wrote The Outsiders - she and I have been in contact for the 50th anniversary of the book - and she said, "You still owe me the 10 dollars that we bet that you couldn't stop saying the word 'gnarly.'"
Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?
Hyacinth,” Lady Bridgerton said in a vaguely disapproving voice, “do try to speak in complete sentences.” Hyacinth looked at her mother with a surprised expression. “Biscuits. Are. Good.” She cocked her head to the side. “Noun. Verb. Adjective.” “Hyacinth.” “Noun. Verb. Adjective.” Colin said, wiping a crumb from his grinning face. “Sentence. Is. Correct.
I learned to write because I am one of those people who somehow cannot manage the common communications of smiles and gestures, but must use words to get across things that other people would never need to say.
I would bet that the average teenager in this country has not used the word 'wisdom' in the past year
One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.
One time I happened to use the word 'denigrate' onstage, and it didn't get any reaction. So as I continued my act, the left side of my brain was fast-forwarding to see if I had any other big words coming up.
I enjoy finding the right word and giving each its full measure, its full space in a sentence.
I know if you talk faster and use more ten-dollar words than everyone around you, you convince half of them that they should shut up because you know what you're talking about.
I really like to talk about my work in a way that is complicated.
The thing that kills me is all these bands that use huge words in their lyrics, 'I'm swimming in a vortex of apathy.' I'm like, 'What?' I don't walk up to a friend and go 'That's a stylin' looking vortex of apathy you've got there pal. I was swimming up a river of deceit myself.'
Technology is a vocabulary and a language in which you can say many things.
I say a lot of things - millions of words a day - so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement.
Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with 'I know that's not a real word,' hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen.
The two mistakes that come to mind are people who introduce a flood of characters in the first few pages. Where the reader has to stop and get out a flow chart and has to figure out who is who. And you just can't do that - introduce the first four generations of a character's family in the first chapter. You can introduce four or five characters at the most in the first chapter. Another mistake is to use big words that are not normally used in conversation to try to impress folks with your vocabulary.
I’d heard he had started a fistfight in one of the seedier local taverns because someone had insisted on saying the word “utilize” instead of “use.
