Quotes About Wordcraft

The Anglo-Saxons had a great word for the right word, the word that you need right now, when another one simply would not do. That word is wordriht.

Strunk and White do a great job of reminding us to avoid needless words, but they don't begin to consider all of the ways in which more words might actually be needed. My goal will be to explain why, in many cases, we need to add words to improve our writing, as Faulkner so frequently does, rather than trying to pare our writing down to some kind of telegraphic minimum, as is frequently the case with Hemingway.