Never look for the story in the 'lede.' Reporters are required to put what's happened up top, but the practiced pundit places a nugget of news, even a startling insight, halfway down the column, directed at the politiscenti. When pressed for time, the savvy reader starts there.

Create your own constituency of the infuriated.

A dependent clause is like a dependent child: incapable of standing on its own but able to cause a lot of trouble.

I want my questions answered by an alert and experienced politician, prepared to be grilled and quoted -- not my hand held by an old smoothie.

A reader should be able to identify a column without its byline or funny little picture on top purely by look or feel, or its turgidity ratio.

The first ladyship is the only federal office in which the holder can neither be fired nor impeached.

[Senators John Kerry & John Edwards] have risen high in Democratic polls with a brand of class resentment and soak-the-rich rhetoric rooted in the old-fashioned liberalism of Ted Kennedy.