Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day today includes a passage from The Golden Book on Writing:
Writing too largely in abstract terms is one of the worst and most wide-spread of literary faults. It sounds learned; it saves the writer from having to use his eyes and ears; and it makes slovenly thinking possible because it does not require definiteness.A related post
The other little book
comments: 2
Thanks, Michael, for all three of these posts and especially the serendipitous one. I read about 15 pages of The Golden Book this morning, and I'm eager to read on. I'm delighted too that in your review, you quote several of the same passages that stood out to me. When I came to the table manners analogy, I knew for sure that I'd like this book.
I love the table manners bit. As you might suspect, I started out with many more passages than I ended up using. He’s just so good.
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