Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.

It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.

I was standing next to a famed geo-politician when the first news of the Argentine attack [on the Faulkland Islands] was received, and heard him muse incredulously: "An old-fashioned naval battle. A war between two civilized nations, perhaps with even a declaration of war, and later a peace conference. Wow." No hostages, no nukes, no ideologies, no religious fanaticism; just a fair-and-square war over national interests - hard to believe, in this day and age.

The most successful column is one that causes the reader to throw down the paper in a peak of fit.

Only in grammar can you be more than perfect.

When duty calls, that is when character counts.