Quotes About Style

we can remind ourselves of the reasons to strive for good style: to enhance the spread of ideas, to exemplify attention to detail, and to add to the beauty of the world.

The form in which thoughts occur to a writer is rarely the same as the form in which they can be absorbed by a reader. The advice in this and other stylebooks is not so much on how to write as on how to revise.

Trend-setters are members of upper classes who adopt the styles of lower classes to differentiate themselves from middle classes, who wouldn't be caught dead in lower-class styles because they're the ones in danger of being mistaken for them.

Strunk was born in 1869, and today's writers cannot base their craft exclusively on the advice of a man who developed his sense of style before the invention of the telephone (let alone the Internet), before the advent of modern linguistics and cognitive science, before the wave of informalization that swept the world in the second half of the twentieth century.

They matters of correct usage pale in importance behind coherence, classic style, and overcoming the curse of knowledge, to say nothing of standards of intellectual conscientiousness. If you really want to improve the quality of your writing, or if you want to thunder about sins in the writing of others, the principles you should worry about the most are not the ones that govern fused participles and possessive antecedents by the ones that govern critical thinking and factual diligence.

The key to good style, far more than obeying any list of commandments, is to have a clear conception of the make-believe world in which you're pretending to communicate.

You can write with clarity and with flair, too. And though the emphasis is on nonfiction, the explanations should be useful to fiction writers as well, because many principles of style apply whether the world being written about is real or imaginary. I like to think they might also be helpful to poets, orators, and other creative wordsmiths, who need to know the canons of pedestrian prose to flout them for rhetorical effect.

Often the pronouns I, me, and you are not just harmless but downright helpful. They simulate a conversation, as classic style recommends, and they are gifts to the memory-challenged reader.

In this chapter I have tried to call your attention to many of the writerly habits that result in soggy prose: metadiscourse, signposting, hedging, apologizing, professional narcissism, clichés, mixed metaphors, metaconcepts, zombie nouns, and unnecessary passives. Writers who want to invigorate their prose could try to memorize that list of don'ts.

In fact, these reference works, with their careful attention to history, literature, and actual usage, are the most adamant debunkers of grammatical nonsense. (This is less true of style sheets drawn up by newspapers and professional societies, and of manuals written by amateurs such as critics and journalists, which tend to mindlessly reproduce the folklore of previous guides.)

Style, not least, adds beauty to the world. To a literate reader, a crisp sentence, an arresting metaphor, a witty aside, an elegant turn of phrase are among life's greatest pleasures.

After noting Snow's "utter lack of intellectual distinction and . . . embarrassing vulgarity of style," Leavis scoffed at a value system in which "'standard of living' is the ultimate criterion, its raising an ultimate aim.

Though bad writing has always been with us, the rules of correct usage are the smallest part of the problem. Any competent copy editor can turn a passage that is turgid, opaque, and filled with grammatical errors into a passage that is turgid, opaque, and free of grammatical errors. Rules of usage are well worth mastering, but they pale in importance behind principles of clarity, style, coherence, and consideration for the reader.

I love deep cleavage on the foot. It reminds me of Berlin in 1930s, 'Cabaret.'

My style is definitely not ladylike - frills and bows kinda scare me - but I like the military look because I love that olive green khaki color.

Sunglasses are great, but I always feel a bit pretentious wearing sunglasses. I mean, I do love to wear them.

I love dressing for the winter - especially in baggy chunky cardigans.

I love Calvin Klein underwear. That's the only kind of underwear I wear.

I love fashion, I love architecture and I love image making so if I can, I would put all these three in one pot.

I am so girly. I love dresses.

I love black lingerie and white shoes, and I love knives.

I love shopping! I'm impatient though. I'll go to the mall and in 30 minutes be ready to go.

So many people preach that they love fashion, but really it's what I live for!

I would wear a full-length cape if I could get away with it - I do love a good swirl in a fog.