We tell our thoughts, like our children, to put on their hats and coats before they go out.

We tell our thoughts, like our children, to put on their hats and coats before they go out.

Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched. Prefer the concrete word to the abstract. Prefer the single word to the circumlocution. Prefer the short word to the long. Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.

Anyone who finds himself putting down several commas close to one another should reflect that he is making himself disagreeable.

After all, it is an ancient and valuable right of the English people to turn their nouns into verbs when they are so minded.

The purpose of paragraphing is to give the reader a rest. The writer is saying . . . : Have you got that? If so, I'll go to the next point.

Quotation... A writer expresses himself in words that have been used before because they give his meaning better than he can give it himself, or because they are beautiful or witty, or because he expects them to touch a cord of association in his reader, or because he wishes to show that he is learned and well read. Quotations due to the last motive are invariably ill-advised; the discerning reader detects it and is contemptuous; the undiscerning is perhaps impressed, but even then is at the same time repelled, pretentious quotations being the surest road to tedium.