The long and the short of it

I'm going against my own advice and stretching out my point on brevity.



Hippocrates: "The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words."

Thomas Jefferson: "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well."

Mark Twain: "I never write metropolis for seven cents when I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman when I can get the same money for cop."

George Eliot: "The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words."

Christopher Buckley: "The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'"

Truman Capote: "I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."

Winston Churchill: "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of all."

Cicero: "When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without noticing the medium."

Leonardo da Vinci: "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Albert Einstein: "Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot of courage--to move in the opposite direction."

Wilson Follett: "Whenever we can make 25 words do the work of 50, we halve the area in which looseness and disorganization can flourish."

H.W. Fowler: "Any one who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid."

Anatole France: "The finest words in the world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them."

Anatole France (and all criminals): "The best sentence? The shortest."

Learned Hand: "The language of law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it."

Robert Heinlein: "The most important lesson in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the fat."

Samuel Johnson: "Do not accustom yourself to use big words for little matters."

Samuel Johnson: "A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit."

Joseph Joubert: "Words, like glasses, obscure everything they do not make clear."

James J. Kilpatrick: "Use familiar words--words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie down until the impulse goes away."

C.S. Lewis: "Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."

John Locke: "Vague forms of speech have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard words mistaken for deep learning, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but a hindrance to true knowledge."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Many a poem is marred by a superfluous word."

W. Somerset Maugham: "The secret of play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you can, cut."

Charles Mingus: "Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity."

George Orwell: "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

Blaise Pascal: "The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter."

William Penn: "Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood."

Alexander Pope: "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found."

Beatrix Potter: "The shorter and the plainer the better."

Will Rogers: "I love words but I don't like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see 'em."

William Safire: "It behooves us to avoid archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do."

William Shakespeare: "Men of few words are the best men."

William Strunk: "A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."

Mark Twain: "As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out."

Mark Twain: "Anybody can have ideas -- the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."

E.B. White: "Use the smallest word that does the job."

William Butler Yeats: "Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people."


While I appreciate the brilliance of the people above - I am glad that Garbl's Concise Writing Guide
took the time to put them together for us.

Speak well. Or in other words, persay, the obligatory excretious verbage, while meleflous, is overabundantly extranious.

Sensitivity Raining

So as I made my rounds in cybertown last night I had the opportunity to stop by some crazy lady's blog - Like they're ain't enough of them in this burg.

she had this heart felt saga about her crazy dog

Well, Muggsy's blowup-free September ended at 23 days today. It was just a weird day all around. In fact, it was so bad that I called the behaviorist. When I got home, everything seemed OK, but when I went to lie down because I'm coming down with something, Muggsy came bolting into the bedroom and laid ontop of me. He wouldn't leave. Chubbs and Fenway wouldn't go near him. It was so weird. After that, he wouldn't leave my side. He wouldn't even get six inches from me. I was doing laundry, and he was underfoot. I sat on the couch, and he sat beside me. I sat down at the computer, and he tried to climb on my lap. He sat in the bathroom for 10 minutes and tried to catch a fly. I put him in his crate and he cried to get out. It was very un-Muggsy-like behavior.

I called my boss and she told me to call the behaviorist. The behaviorist said that something probably happened to scare him today and just go on with life as if he were fine. She said not to be worried until it went on a couple of days. But of course I'm worried! My boss suggested that maybe someone tried to get in the house today or made a big noise outside. She also said that an earthquake might be coming since dogs tend to get freaky before an earthquake. At her advice, I took him to a drive-through for a special treat. We went to McDonalds and then I gave him a chicken sandwich at Peck Park. When we got back home, he seemed a little better. But then he got really freaked out by a fly in the living room. He just couldn't settle down, running from room to room, climbing on Ross. We killed the fly and put him in his crate with a bone. And so comes the blowup.

We noticed that he wasn't chewing on the bone, so we went to try to let him out of his crate. As soon as Ross got close, he started growling. A few minutes later, I tried, and he growled at me. But I didn't want to leave when he started growling because I don't want him to learn that aggression works. I waited and he kept going, progressing into a full-blown blowup. I'm letting him relax now before I try to let him out one more time. If I can't let him out now, he'll have to stay in there all night.

Oh and did I mention that when we were leaving to go to the drivethrough, four little boys were walking by on our sidewalk and started making noises at Muggsy. So he lunged and burned my hand with the leash, trying to hold him back.

But Ross has generously offered to stay home tomorrow and make sure he's OK since I have two deadlines in the morning. I hope to see improvement tomorrow.

And I couldn't help but laugh until pieces of my throat lining dislodged and came to rest on my keyboard.
Of course this deserved a comment that would help and i manged something like:
"that's the funniest thing I've ever read because you really believe it!" Then I added the advice that she should leave her radio tuned to NPR for poor puppy while she and "daddy" are away. It would help aleviate puppys insecurity and make him have more self esteem.

When people are so self absorbed that they won't raise children, they try to compensate for their natural desire to nurture by turning poor puppies into their "children". This is a disaster factory. There is no way that a dog who is treated like a spoiled human baby will ever be normal.

It would be better for the dog if it were a stray, roaming the streets for food and joining a pack of currs.

Please don't do this. If you feel the need ot spoil a living creature, go to the local orphanage and buy some kid there a chicken sammich - they will probably say "thank you" and maybe even hug you. Do this three or four times a week if you want to, just don't screw up some poor dogs mind with your "love".

Why are women so stupid?

I mean really, French Pedicures? We all know that allfrench women are perfectly coiffured and have imaculate hygene but why inthe heckare chicks all over America doing this thing where they put the little white stripes on the edge of their toenails? and why do they have a quarter inch of claw haning off the edge of their toes anyway? What, are they climbing telephone poles? What could women in America possibly be doing that requires their toenails to drag the pavement?

I'm just gonna warn my wife right now - if you come to bed with daggers onyour feet you will be there alone!

I have been out in public and seen what seem to be normal housewife type women of all ages with these Talons dangling out of their sandals. Not old, nasty women who never seem to be able to keep them trimmed (due to lack of flexibility or pedicure funding) but women who go into "happy nails" and tell the Vietnamese lady "Make my toenails stick out real far".

Gross.

Britney's guide to semiconductor physics

I just had to add theis link becaus it is wonderful. Britney's guide to semiconductor physics.

It is amazing that she had the time to study - let alone explain this tough subject what with her singing career, motherhood and tv reality show and all. Did you see the episode where she and Kevin got the Schrödinger equation tattooed on their inner thighs? Now that's Reality TV!

Sunday Morning Wakeup Call

7AM - I worked till 11 last night and didn't really get to bed till 3AM. Sooooo I wasn't really happy when Skittles the Wonder Dog (played by Ed from The Lion King) Came scratching and whining at 7AM.

He (accompanied by Maddie - played by Nala) went out and had a great time peeing and pooping and sniffing and licking themselves and each other. For about ten minutes. Just as I had settled back in again and got all snuggly with Michele , the howling started - Skittles can break windows when he gets going.

Most of his life he was very quiet but in the last couple of months he has found his voce and been getting very demanding (much like his older sister, Reese - played by Santa). Where Reese make the neighbors think we are beating her (with her sharp, painful-sounding yipes) when she wants in, Skittles does an impression of an A10 Warthog. The piercing noise doesn't even sound dog-like. Imagine a beagle with his balls in a vice. Then play that at double speed and there you go. If you have ever heard the distinctive sound of an A10 - Imagine one tied down outside your bedroom window at full throttle.



That's what I got at 7:15AM this morning.

The whole time Virtual Boy snoozed in his room.

The price of gas and beach bums

So tonight I sat and waited for the freakin tourists to show up. Normally I am so annoyed with Labor Day and can't wait for the throngs of blibbety-blabs to get the giggety giggety out of town so I can have my beach back

Tonight however was a real experience. I rented two rooms - one to a local. Either the price of gas put the trip out of the reach of many families or folks decided to give their vacation money to the Salvation Army and Red Cross.

I really hope it's the latter.

Give to the Red Cross Here.

Donate to Salvation Army

Don't forget the Wonderful Ministry Samaritan's Purse


All three of these organizations are well-run and do not waste money padding the pockets of execs.