Grammar and Usage

You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.

ROBERT FROST

Word has somehow got around that the split infinitive is always wrong. That is a piece with the outworn notion that it is always wrong to strike a lady.

JAMES THURBER

It is indeed acceptable practice to sometimes split an infinitive. If infinitive-splitting makes available just the shade of meaning you desire or if avoiding the separation creates a confusing ambiguity or patent artificiality, you are entitled to happily go ahead and split!

RICHARD LEDERER

When you catch an adjective, kill it.

MARK TWAIN

The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.

CLIFTON FADIMAN

The adjective is the enemy of the noun.

VOLTAIRE

If the noun is good and the verb is strong, you almost never need an adjective.

J. ANTHONY LUKAS

Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers “Please will you do my job for me?”

C.S. LEWIS

Forward motion in any piece of writing is carried by verbs. Verbs are the action words of the language and the most important. Turn to any passage on any page of a successful novel and notice the high percentage of verbs. Beginning writers always use too many adjectives and adverbs and generally use too many dependent clauses. Count your words and words of verbal force (like that word “force” I just used).

WILLIAM SLOANE

The editorial "we" has often been fatal to rising genius; though all the world knows that it is only a form of speech, very often employed by a single needy blockhead.

THOMAS BAINGTON MACAULAY

Only presidents, editors and people with tapeworm have the right to use the editorial "we."

MARK TWAIN