The Expression is adequate, when it is proportionably low to the Profundity of the Thought. It must not be always Grammatical, lest it appear pedantic and ungentlemanly; not too clear, for fear it become vulgar; for Obscurity bestows a Cast of the Wonderful, and throws an oracular dignity upon a Piece which has no meaning.
Alexander Pope: Peri Bathous or, the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1728)
The better you write, the higher you go. People who think well, write well.
You shudder at a split infinitive, know when to use 'that' or 'which' and would never confuse 'less' with 'fewer' – but are these rules always right, elegant or sensible?
We assume others understand the words we use, share the same skills we possess, and know the obscure facts that we perceive as common knowledge.
Easily disposed redundancies.
Plain English is mandatory for all of GOV.UK so please avoid using these words.
The shorter and plainer the better.
If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Although the idea continues to capture public imagination, most linguists considered it an urban legend, born of sloppy scholarship and journalistic exaggeration.
Bad English kills trees, consumes energy, and befouls the earth. Good English renews it.
Richard Mitchell, The Underground Grammarian
Punctuation absorbs more of my thought than seems healthy for a man who pretends to be well adjusted.
In the family of punctuation where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly.
Every word needs to have a purpose in your writing, and there are plenty that don’t contribute anything but clutter.
A very silly man gives a very sinister speech.
You should memorise some Latin abbreviations such as "Q.E.D.,"' "e.g.,'' and "i.e.'' These are all short for "I speak Latin, and you do not.''
We live in an era of incontinent celebration and exponential hyperbole. No one has given a mere 100% in years: 120% is normal and 150% far from exceptional. Everything is world-class. Any rock band that survives narcotic depredation and managerial peculation to re-form in wizened middle age is legendary. Artisans going quietly about their business in the back of beyond, baking loaves or gutting herrings, find themselves declared food heroes.