Quotes About Communication

Ernest Hemingway once advised prose artists to 'Write hard and clear about what hurts.

Finally, don't be fooled by words like orientate or commentate, misguided back-formations from orientation and commentator; orient and comment do the job just fine. Don't use big words to gloss over the truth or to pump air into ideas.

The most common prepositional error is forgetting that the noun or pronoun in a prepositional phrase is the object of the preposition. The object of the preposition must be expressed in the objective case. Who can forget Jane Russell's line, in a 1970s Playtex ad, for a bra "for we full-figured gals." The preposition for mandates the pronoun us. But, then, Russell never was known for her pronouns.

Pronouns are proxies for nouns. They stand in willingly when nouns don't want to hang around sounding repetitive. The noun (or noun phrase), whose bidding the pronoun does, is called the antecedent—because it goes (ced-) before (ante-) the pronoun in the sentence or paragraph.

You'll most likely find interjections at the beginning of a sentence, followed by a comma or an exclamation point: Ahem! Wake up—this is the last chapter on parts of speech.

heed Hugh Blair, a very emeritus Edinburgh professor whose advice from 1783 has stood the test of more than two centuries: "Remember . . . every Audience is ready to tire; and the moment they begin to tire, all our Eloquence goes for nothing. A loose and verbose manner never fails to disgust . . . better [to say] too little, than too much.

What would a grammar book be if it didn't lounge around in a little Latin? Let

If you write short, crisp sentences without any sinces or whens or althoughs, try stringing varied sentences together by using subordinate conjunctions. If you already rely on subordinate conjunctions, try rebalancing your sentences with ands and buts and fors and sos. Does the change of conjunctions change your style?

To find the right pitch is to be human, to have a sense of the street, while still reaching for the lofty. It means resisting the kind of language that suits cogs in a machine better than sentient beings.

If all of this seems paradoxical, get used to it. Language is paradox.

Why do so many of us, when we sit down to write, sound like word processors rather than wordsmiths? Why do we spew the slogans of the consumer culture we work for, rather than sounding like the bards we want to be?

The technically incorrect It's me and That's me have been part of our DNA since as long as English has been recorded. There's something nice and low-key about them. Maybe we just crave a simple English equivalent of the French C'est moi .

Let's never forget that we need to speak and write like human beings with hearts, and not like the tin woodsman in The Wizard of Oz or Hal in the movie 2001 .

The long form of the possessive pronoun replaces the noun. completely.

I have never harmed you, and I will never know why you felt it necessary to harm me." The Raven was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke his voice was no more than a raspy whisper. "I think, my lady, I was also harmed by you.

Sharper than a serpent's fang is a woman's tongue

Men and women can have a platonic relationship and not make their spouses worry. It is when calls and meetings become secret that we need to start worrying if they are being true to us.

You never have to apologize for the thing you don't say.

For her too, she had words on her lips, which died unborn, lay in her mind and turned to poison.

But Alberta sat there wretchedly. God knows who put the words into her mouth. They were not her own. They were foreign to her, stupid words behind which she hid herself. Her own never saw the light of day, they died unborn or withered on her tongue and were born distorted. She was disabled, she was without the use of speech, she would die of muteness.

Sometimes Alberta felt as if there were a conspiracy against her, as if the whole world were in agreement not to say a word. A foolish desire to shake people – But speak out, can't you – would come over her. If she did not do so, it was because we really can remain on the verge of action for a long time without doing anything.

It's dangerous to deal with words. In addition the author risks being flayed and stuffed after death by any little youthful and self-assured doctor of literature.

Freedom of expression - in particular, freedom of the press - guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy.

Some day, I must ask him what it's like to be married to someone who, eyes narrowed in thought, peers at him over the tops of sociology articles with titles like "Who Gets the Best Deal from Marriage: Women or Men?" We've had our disagreements, of course. When, for example, are a few dirty cups a symbol of the exertion of male privilege, and when are they merely unwashed dishes?