{"id":13582,"date":"2016-02-05T08:49:42","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T12:49:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/?page_id=13582"},"modified":"2024-01-01T08:22:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-01T12:22:12","slug":"quotes-on-average-word-length","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.wyliecomm.com\/writing-tips\/what-is-readability\/word-length\/quotes-on-average-word-length\/","title":{"rendered":"Quotes on average word length"},"content":{"rendered":"

What writers & others say<\/h2>\n

\"Quotes

\n

“Be careful of the words you say
\nKeep them short and sweet
\nYou never know, from day to day,
\nWhich ones you\u2019ll have to eat.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
\n
“Never use a big word when a diminutive phrase can be utilized.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Anonymous<\/h6>\n
\n
“I’d lecture a bunch of chemists or engineers about the importance of not saying, ‘It would be appreciated if you would contact the undersigned by telephone at your earliest possible convenience,’ and instead saying, ‘Please call me as soon as you can.’ That was revealed wisdom to these people.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist, on the eight years he spent teaching businesspeople how to write<\/h6>\n
\n
“Readers may know that utilize<\/em> means use<\/em> and optimum<\/em> means best<\/em>. But why make them translate?”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Skip Boyer, the late executive producer and director of executive communication at Best Western International Inc.<\/h6>\n
\n
“We would not talk about optimum dietary in our own dining rooms. Nor, I hope, would any normal man say to his wife, \u2018I would like a differential in my nutrition-units for breakfast tomorrow.\u2019\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Ivor Brown, British journalist<\/h6>\n
\n
“Imagine if Shakespeare had written, \u2018All’s well that finalizes well.\u2019\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Steve Chawkins, columnist, Ventura County Star<\/em><\/h6>\n
\n
“Short words are best, and old words when short are the best of all.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Winston Churchill, British statesman, author, prime minister<\/h6>\n
\n
“Leave \u2018said\u2019 alone. Don’t be tempted by the muse of variation to permit characters to opine, elaborate, cajole<\/em>, or chortle<\/em>.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Roy Peter Clark, vice president and senior scholar, The Poynter Institute, in Writing Tools<\/em><\/h6>\n
\n
“To speak of \u2018mere words\u2019 is much like speaking of \u2018mere dynamite.\u2019”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 C.J. Ducasse, French philosopher<\/h6>\n
\n
“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Faulkner, Nobel Prize-winning author, on Ernest Hemingway<\/h6>\n
\n
“You can destroy the life in any piece of writing by gutting its verbs.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Jack Hart, managing editor of The<\/em> Oregonian<\/em>, in A Writer’s Coach<\/em><\/h6>\n
\n
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don\u2019t know the $10 words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Ernest Hemingway, author, on William Faulkner<\/h6>\n
\n
“When we can use the precise word, rather than its second cousin, we ought to do so. It’s good discipline, for one thing, and good fun to boot.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 James J. Kilpatrick, journalist and author of The Writer’s Art<\/em><\/h6>\n
\n
“Anglo-Saxon, the honest language of peasants, packs a wallop. In Anglo-Saxon, a man who drinks to excess is not bibulous<\/em> but a drunk<\/em>, a man who steals is not a perpetrator<\/em>, but a thief<\/em>, and a man who is follically-impaired is not glabrous<\/em>, but bald<\/em>. Direct language is powerful language.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Bill Luening, senior editor, The Kansas City Star<\/em><\/h6>\n
\n
“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like \u2018What about lunch?\u2019\u201d<\/h5>\n
\u2014 A.A. Milne, English author and creator of Winnie-the-Pooh<\/h6>\n
\n
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns \u2026 instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 George Orwell, English novelist, in Shooting an Elephant: Politics and the English Language<\/em><\/h6>\n
\n
“Words like\u00a0phenomenon, element, individual<\/em>\u00a0(as noun),\u00a0objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate,\u00a0<\/em>are used to dress up simple statements and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgments.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 George Orwell, English novelist<\/h6>\n
\n
“English is the product of a Saxon warrior trying to make a date with an Anglo barmaid, and as such is no more legitimate than any of the other products of that conversation.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 H. Beam Piper, science fiction author<\/h6>\n
\n
“When is the word ‘utilize’ better than the word ‘use’? Scrabble.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Ragan, CEO, Ragan<\/h6>\n
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“Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 William Safire, columnist for The New York Times<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“I see but one rule: to be clear.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Stendhal, 19th-century French writer<\/h6>\n
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“Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Tom Stoppard, English playwright<\/h6>\n
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“Avoid the elaborate, the pretentious, the coy, and the cute. Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Strunk and White, The Elements of Style<\/em><\/h6>\n
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“Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Twain, American author and wit<\/h6>\n
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“The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Twain, American author and wit<\/h6>\n
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“I never use the word\u00a0metropolis<\/em>, because I\u2019m always paid the same amount of money to write\u00a0city<\/em>. I never write\u00a0policeman<\/em>\u00a0because I can get the same price for\u00a0cop<\/em>. I never write\u00a0valetudinarian<\/em>\u00a0at all, for not even hunger and wretchedness could humble me to the point where I will do a word like that for seven cents; I wouldn\u2019t do it for fifteen.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Twain, American author and wit, in a letter to D. W. Bowser<\/h6>\n
\n
“[To an editor]: It is curious and interesting to notice what an attraction a fussy, mincing, nickel-plated word has for you. \u2026 It was sound English before you decayed it. Sell it to the museum.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Mark Twain, American author and wit<\/h6>\n
\n
“William Shakespeare wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. ‘To be or not to be?’ asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist<\/h6>\n
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“Language is a very difficult thing to put into words.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher<\/h6>\n
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“Compensation<\/em> and remuneration<\/em> say nothing that pay<\/em> does not say better. Gift is more to the point than donation. Room<\/em> will beat accommodation<\/em> every time, as try<\/em> will defeat endeavor<\/em>. On the other hand, interface, parameter, viable, finalize<\/em> and prioritize<\/em> are typical of the voguish words that mask, rather than reveal, what it is we want to say.”<\/h5>\n
\u2014 Alden S. Wood, columnist on language and English usage<\/h6>\n
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