If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.

Even a poor translator couldn't kill a style that moves with such narrative clarity.

Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know-and what we don't know-about whatever we're trying to learn.

Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.

You can solve most of your writing problems if you stop after every sentence and ask: what does the reader need to know next?

My four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.