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畢泠

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   英文文法和寫作指導
   摘自天下文壇   畢泠  2005-05-08 12:26
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大家好！

這份教材是 Jack Lynch 教授所編寫的，有很詳細的說明，從 A-Z 都有主題連結，請按網頁連結閱讀，亦請時間方便的朋友們幫忙下載本教材內容貼文分享，將來我們再整理、分類，讓喜歡的人可以收藏，在閒暇時，不需上網亦可閱讀。

本文中有許多教學網站，請按總連結後查看即可。
﹝全世界很多大學包括台灣的外文系都使用 Jack Lynch 教授的著作，作為教材。﹞

很抱歉，目前僅提供英文原文資料，等我們時間許可時將會陸續翻譯出來，以方便大家。

網頁連結：

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/

Guide to Grammar and Style
By Jack Lynch
Last revised 14 September 2004.

NOW AVAILABLE:
My edition of Johnson'sDictionary (Walker & Co.) A just-for-fun collection of Johnson's zingers and put-downs.

Note: I've been working on a new guide that might help some readers of this one, called "Getting an A on an English Paper." It's far from finished, but it may still be useful.

Links
I've also been experimenting with a new search engine. It's very rudimentary, but may be useful.

Introduction
These notes are a miscellany of grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage I put together for my classes.

Nothing here is carved in stone, and many comments are matters of personal preference — feel free to psychoanalyze me by examining my particular hangups and bêtes noires.

Anyone who can resist turning my own preferences into dogma is welcome to use this HTML edition. Feedback is always welcome.

I should be clear up front: I'm not a linguist, nor a scholar of the history of the language. (If you're curious about who I am, you can look at my CV and decide whether I'm worth listening to.)

Linguists are wary of "prescriptive" grammars, which set out standards of "correct" and "incorrect" usage — grammars that usually insist correctness reigned in the good old days, whereas we've been on the road to hell ever since.

Professional linguists are adamant that the language isn't "declining," and that many usages censured by self-styled grammarians are in fact perfectly reasonable, whether on historical grounds, logical grounds, or both.

And they're right. I reject any model of linguistic decline, in which the twenty-first century speaks a decadent version of the language of some golden age.

I don't lie awake at night worrying about the decline of "proper" English. (In my grumpier moods, I'm convinced the whole world's going to hell — but then, I'm convinced the whole world's been going to hell since time out of mind. In my more sanguine moods, I wonder whether hell isn't such a bad place to be after all.)

I know, too, that many things offered as "good" grammar or style have little basis in history or in logic.

* * * * *

Why, then, have I spent so much time on a prescriptive and fairly traditional usage guide? Because these notes may be useful in making your writing clearer and more effective.

I'm not out to make definitive statements about what's right and what's wrong, and Lord knows I wouldn't be qualified even if I tried.

I can, however, make suggestions on things that are likely to work — by which, as you'll see throughout this guide, I mean have an effect on your audience.

The entries here are of two types: specific articles on usage, and more general articles on style. The specific articles cover such mechanical things as when to use a semicolon and what a dangling participle is; the general articles discuss ways to make "proper" writing even better.

The specific articles can be further divided into two classes:

(1) grammatical rules and matters of house style, matters rather of precedent than of taste; and

(2) more subjective suggestions for making your writing clearer, more forceful, and more graceful. The specific articles are intended for quick reference, such as when you have to find out whether which or that is appropriate.

The general articles lend themselves to browsing and absorbing over time.

These general articles are no less important than the "rules." In fact, really bad writing is rarely a matter of broken rules — editors can clean these up with a few pencil marks. It's more often the result of muddled thought.

Bad writers consider long words more impressive than short ones, and use words like usage instead of use or methodologies instead of methods without knowing what they mean.

They qualify everything with It has been noted after careful consideration, and the facts get buried under loads of useless words.

They pay no attention to the literal sense of their words, and end up stringing stock phrases together without regard for meaning.

They use clichés inappropriately and say the opposite of what they mean.

I've tried to steer clear of technical terms and, wherever possible, have tried to explain grammatical jargon.

This has sometimes meant sacrificing precision for convenience; more sophisticated writers and grammarians will doubtless see points to quibble over, but I hope these notes get the idea across to tyros.

Every article on points of grammar — dangling participles, split infinitives — begins with a practical definition of the term, followed by some useful rules, and examples of good and bad writing.

Sometimes there are suggestions on how to identify possible problems. The definitions and discussions are not exhaustive, just rules of thumb.

If you need more detail, consider one of the books in the last section, "Additional Reading."

Additional Reading
There are countless writing guides, most of them awful. The books below are either classics in the field or my own faves.

· H. W. Fowler, Modern English Usage. This seven-hundred-page volume of small type includes every conceivable stylistic point, arranged alphabetically, and written in an informal (but quirky) tone. Some of the entries are specific — several pages on punctuation — while others are general, such as tired clichés.

Almost every entry has illustrative quotations from real life. Fowler was qualified for the job, having just compiled the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

Yanks may find this classic work unsuitable because of its focus on British English, and much of it has been outdated in the eight decades since its first edition's completion.

Still worth a look. A companion, Modern American Usage by Follett, makes up for some of Fowler's disadvantages, but lacks the charm of the original.

· Sir Ernest Gowers et al., The Complete Plain Words. Ernest Gowers's Plain Words is a guide to effective writing from the 1940s for British civil servants.

Over the years it has gone through many editions and been changed by many hands. The most recent version, The Complete Plain Words, still shows its focus on British usage and the civil service, but many of its suggestions are excellent.

Most of the book is a discussion of common writing problems, with examples of good and bad writing. There is also a long section on specific points of usage, arranged alphabetically.

· George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language." Orwell's essay is one of the great works on the plain style. The essay should be available in any popular collection of Orwell's essays. Read it daily. Keep a copy under your pillow.

· Thomas Pinney, A Short Handbook and Style Sheet. A handy little guide to style, written informally and accessibly. The general sections (on diction, vagueness, wordiness, and so on) are better than those devoted to mechanics. Pinney's work is refreshingly free of dogmatism of any sort.

· Margaret Shertzer, The Elements of Grammar. Not bad if you're looking for very specific rules, but not highly recommended as a general guide. It includes things like "Capitalize nouns followed by a capitalized Roman numeral" and the proper spelling of bête noire. Easily available, since it's often sold with Strunk and White (below).

· Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. The standard high school guide to style, and useful well beyond school. It includes a number of specific rules, dozens of commonly misused words, and bundles of suggestions for improving your style.

Available anywhere (now including an on-line version of Strunk's 1918 edition). Read it. Memorize it. Live it.

· Maxwell Nurnberg, I Always Look Up the Word "Egregious": A Vocabulary Book for People Who Don't Need One. A pleasant guide to building vocabulary that never becomes patronizing (the fault of too many books for beginners) or drifts off into utterly useless long words (the fault of too many books for fans of word games).

It's probably too sophisticated for non-native speakers and rank beginners, but will help many others build a more powerful vocabulary.

· The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed. Not only a good desk dictionary for providing definitions, but also a handy guide to usage on controversial questions. AHD has a panel of writers who vote on whether certain usages are acceptable.

· Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It's not a comprehensive treatise to answer all your questions, and it describes British rather than American practice (well, practise).

And the "zero-tolerance" stuff shouldn't be taken too seriously. But the book's a hoot, and if you're curious about the finer points of punctuation, check it out.

On-Line Sources
Keith Ivey's English Usage Page contains many valuable discussions of grammar, style, and usage, and includes many references to the alt.usage.english newsgroup and the excellent collection of frequently asked questions compiled by Mark Israel.

See also the Elementary Grammar at www.hiway.co.uk, the on-line edition of Strunk's 1918 Elements of Style, and Gary Shapiro's page on It's versus Its.

I also maintain another collection of on-line writers' resources.

Mirror sites of this page are available around the world. Most of them are unauthorized (only a few were considerate enough to ask for my permission before reproducing my work), and most of them represent versions long out of date.

I assume responsibility only for this version, at http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/.

But if you have trouble connecting to this site, feel free to try the others, for what they're worth.

North America: http://www.baclass.panam.edu/coba/grammar.html

http://gsh.lightspan.com/weblib/lynch/

http://cs.senecac.on.ca/~topalian/eac149/grammar/lynchstyleandusageguide.html (Canada)

Africa: http://www.botany.uwc.ac.za/sciwriting/grammar.htm (South Africa)

Asia: http://fl.hfu.edu.tw/HyperNews-c/get/forums/gw/12/19.html (Taiwan)

Australia: http://www.unisanet.unisa.edu.au/07118/grammar.htm (Australia)

Europe: http://www.tp4.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/~ub/HTML/englishgrammar.html (Germany)

http://cmfd.univ.trieste.it/grammar.html (Italy)

http://www.abc.lv/thinkquest/tutorials/grammar_style/docs/1/ (Latvia)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=422

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
Selections From the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language
Jack Lynch

http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=422

Two volumes thick and 2,300 pages long, Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, published in 1755, marked a milestone in a language in desperate need of standards.

No English dictionary before it had devoted so much space to everyday words, been so thorough in its definitions, or illustrated usage by quoting from Shakespeare and other great writers.

Johnson's Dictionary would define the language for the next 150 years, until the arrival of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Johnson's was the dictionary used by Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Brontës and the Brownings, Thomas Hardy and Oscar Wilde. Modern dictionaries owe much to Johnson’s work.

This new edition, created by Levenger Press, contains more than 3,100 selections from the original, including etymology, definitions, and illustrative passages in their original spelling.

Bristling with quotations, the Dictionary offers memorable passages on subjects ranging from books and critics to dreams and ethics.

It also features three new indexes created out of entries in this edition: words found in Shakespeare's works, words from other great literary works, and piquant terms used in eighteenth-century discussions of such topics as law, medicine, and the sexes.

Finally, Johnson's “Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language,” seldom seen in print, which he wrote eight years before the Dictionary, is reproduced in its entirety.

For those who appreciate literature, interpret the law, and love language, this a browser’s delight—an encyclopedia of the age and a dictionary for the ages.

畢泠在星期二一月 18, 2005 6:28 am 作了第 2 次修改

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發表於: 星期二十二月 21, 2004 4:55 pm 文章主題: Samuel Johnson's Dictionary - Interview with Jack Lynch

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Samuel Johnson's Dictionary
Selections From the 1755 Work That Defined the English Language
Jack Lynch

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary - Interview with Jack Lynch

http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=422&display=adoc

JACK LYNCH ON SAMUEL JOHNSON
A CONVERSATION WITH THE SCHOLAR WHO CRAFTED THIS EDITION OF SAMUEL JOHNSON'S DICTIONARY

Imagine striking a rich vein the first time you mine for gold. That was roughly the experience we had when, taking to the Web one day in search of potential editors for the Levenger Press edition of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, we came upon Jack Lynch’s Web site.

An English professor at Rutgers University, Jack seemed to know everything worth knowing about Samuel Johnson.

Would he, we ventured in a subsequent email to him, know anyone who might be interested in editing our Dictionary? He just might, he responded, be interested himself. We’d struck gold.

As it turns out, Jack does know just about everything worth knowing about Samuel Johnson and his time.

For Jack's dust-jacket bio, click here . Then read on and enjoy a lively and insightful look into the Dictionary through the eyes of a Johnson scholar.

Levenger Press: Who should read Samuel Johnson's Dictionary?

Jack Lynch: Anyone interested in the English language. It's a kind of founding document, like the Declaration of Independence.

If you want insight into the United States, you read the Declaration of Independence. If you want to know about the English language, you read Johnson's Dictionary.

LP: But why read a dictionary from 1755 in 2002? Are there still traces of it in our language and in our Websters?

JL: The age of Johnson was an important time for the English language. Historical linguists say we've been speaking modern English since around 1500, but the English spoken a century before Shakespeare doesn't look very modern to our eyes.

For most readers, the language only starts to look familiar in the eighteenth century.

So while it's fun to see the old-fashioned words that have fallen out of use, it's amazing just how much of Johnson's Dictionary is still relevant today.

LP: Was Johnson the best man of his time to define the English language?

JL: It's hard to imagine anyone better. He combined a scholar's knowledge with a poet's sensitivity to the language.

And even though he spent his life agonizing over how lazy he was, who else had the energy to read through thousands of books and write tens of thousands of definitions single-handedly, in just a few years?

LP: Harold Bloom refers to Samuel Johnson as the ideal reader. What role did reading play in compiling this dictionary?

JL: Johnson was a remarkable reader. In fact, one of the most distinguished scholars of Johnson's Dictionary, Robert DeMaria, recently wrote Samuel Johnson and the Life of Reading, a study of his reading habits.

Johnson read voraciously from early childhood until the day he died. So when he started working on his Dictionary, it was only natural that he should start by reading.

He wanted to describe the language as it was used by the best English writers, so he read systematically through great mountains of books, and copied out hundreds of thousands of passages.

We can think of the Dictionary as the world's most extensive reading notebook.

LP: Did they read Samuel Johnson's Dictionary in the American colonies?

JL: All the time. James Basker, a scholar at Barnard College, examined the catalogs of 68 American booksellers in the eighteenth century.

He found Johnson's works in 66 of them, and in almost every library catalog that survives from the period.

It was so popular that Noah Webster felt stifled by its influence, and in 1807 he attacked it in a bitter pamphlet, to make room for his own distinctively American dictionary.

LP: The original Dictionary had over 40,000 entries and was two volumes thick. The Levenger Press edition has over 3,100 entries and is 654 pages. How did you select which words to include?

JL: I started by cutting most of the obvious definitions, like "slider: he who slides," or "backbone: the bone of the back."

I also cut most of the derivative words: "savingly: from saving," or "unheated: not made hot." Entries like that helped trim the book by maybe 30 percent. Then I read through what was left.

I was drawn to the entries that show how the language has changed in the last quarter millennium, to those that give us a glimpse of daily life in Johnson's London, and to those that show Johnson's analytical mind at its sharpest.

I then went through a stack of books and articles on the Dictionary to see which words are mentioned by others.

And after all that I read through the whole Dictionary twice to make sure I didn't miss anything.

LP: Johnson once said his work was finished but not completed. What did he mean?

JL: He knew that no dictionary could ever be perfect -- and even if it was, he knew that the English language is a moving target, and dictionaries would always have to be revised to account for the changing language.

LP: Your three favorite words in this edition.

JL: It's hard to pick just three. Of course I like all the famous entries, but editing the Dictionary showed me some less familiar ones.

I always get a kick out of anatiferous, "producing ducks."

Johnson's definition of defluxion as "a defluxion" is funny -- seeing a slip like that reminds us how rare such slip-ups are.

And his usage notes can be a hoot. When he defines gratefulness as "gratitude: duty to benefactors" and adds "now obsolete," he leaves it ambiguous as to whether the word or the idea is now out of fashion.

Jack Lynch is a professor of English at Rutgers University and a Johnson scholar, having studied the great lexicographer for nearly a decade.

He is the author of The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of A Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies, 1986-1998.

He has also written journal articles and scholarly reviews addressing Johnson and the eighteenth century, and hosts a Web site devoted to these topics at

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/18th/.

    天下文壇天下文壇畢泠  2005-05-08 12:26
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Samuel Johnson's Insults.

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   Samuel Johnson's Insults.
   摘自天下文壇   畢泠  2005-05-08 12:27
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Samuel Johnson's Insults

A Compendium of Snubs, Sneers, Slights and Effronteries from the Eighteenth-Century Master

Jack Lynch

http://www.walkerbooks.com/books/catalog.php?key=433

If you can't think of anything nice to say, let Samuel Johnson show you how to raise the insult to an art form.

Lackbrain, witworm, lubbard, clodpate, pickthank—these and hundreds more grandiloquent vituperations populated the 2,300 pages of Johnson's famous Dictionary of 1755.

In Samuel Johnson's Insults, Jack Lynch gathers more than 350 of these mighty barbs and brings us the definitions as only the great and curmudgeonly lexicographer can elucidate them.

Word lovers will delight in flexing their linguistic muscles with expressions that still have a lot of punch. Many of these zingers have long lain dormant.

Some have even come close to extinction. But now they're back in all their prickly glory, ready to be relished once more.J

ack Lynch, a Johnson scholar and professor of English at Rutgers University, is the editor of Samuel Johnson's Dictionary (Levenger Press/Walker & Company) and the author of The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson.

Backfriend: a friend backwards; that is, an enemy in secret.
Fustilarian: a low fellow; a stinkard; a scoundrel.
Runnion: a paltry scurvy wretch.
Uxorious: infected with connubial dotage.

A Levenger Press Book

畢泠在星期二一月 18, 2005 6:31 am 作了第 1 次修改

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註冊時間: 2004-08-21
文章: 1954

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發表於: 星期二十二月 21, 2004 10:51 pm 文章主題: Guide to Grammar and Style — Contents

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Guide to Grammar and Style — Contents
From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/contents.html

﹝以下可在網頁上按連結瀏覽，本主題有全部 A-Z 貼文，可以直接儲存﹞

Contents

A or An
The Above, The Following
Absent
Absolutely
Academies
Acronyms
Action Verbs
Adjectives and Adverbs
Advise
Affect versus Effect
Aggravate
Agreement
All of
Alot
Alright
Also
Alternate, Alternative
Among versus Between
And/or
Antecedent
Anticipate
Anxious versus Eager
Any Way, Shape, or Form
Apostrophe
Apposition
Articles
Assure, Ensure, Insure
As to Whether
Aspect
As Yet
At This Point, At the Present Time, At This Point in Time
Audience
Back-Formation
Basically
Being That
Block Quotations
Bluntness
Boldface
British Spellings
Bugbears
But at the Beginning
Cannot
Capable
Capitalization
Centralized
-Century
Citation
Clarity
Clearly, Obviously, Undoubtedly
Clichés
Colon
Commas
Comparatives
Comprise
Concrete Language
Conjunctions
Considered as, Considered to be
Continual versus Continuous
Contractions
Currently
Dangling Participle
Dash
Data
Dates
Denotation versus Connotation
Dependent versus Independent Clauses
Diction
Dictionaries
Different
Direct and Indirect Objects
Disinterested versus Uninterested
Dive, Dived, Dove
Due to the Fact That
E-Prime
Each
Ellipses
Economy
E.g. versus i.e
Emphasis
Enormity
Equally As
Every
Every Day versus Everyday
Exists
Facet
The Fact That
Farther versus Further
Feel
Finalize
First, Second, Third
First Person
Fonts
Foreign Words and Phrases
Formal Writing
Fortuitous
Functionality
Gender
Generalizations
Grace
Grammar
Grammar Checkers
Hopefully
House Style
Hypercorrection
Hyphen
Idiolect
Impact
Imperative
Imply versus Infer
Important
Individual
Infinitive
Inflection
Interesting
In Terms of
Interpolation
Ironic
Irregardless
Italics
It Can Be Argued
It's versus Its
Jargon
Justification
Latinate versus Germanic Diction
Lay versus Lie
Lead versus Led
Less versus Fewer
Liaise
Lifestyle
Like versus As
Listing
Literally
Long Words
Massive
Mechanics
Media
Methodology
Microsoft Word
Mixed Metaphor
Modifier
Momentarily
Mood
More So
Myself
Nature
Nauseous
Necessitate
Neologisms
Network
"Never" and "Always"
Nor
Not un-
Noun
Number
Numbers
Obfuscation
Old English
On a —— Basis
Only
Paragraphs
Parameter
Parentheses
Particular
Parts of Speech
Passive Voice
Per
Personalized
Phenomena
Plurals
Plus
Precision
Prepositions
Prepositions at the End
Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammars
Previous
Prior to
Pronoun
Pronunciation
Proofreading
Punctuation and Quotation Marks
Punctuation and Spaces
Quality
Quite
Quote
Re
Recasting Sentences
Redundancy
Revision
Rhetorical Questions
Rules
Run-On Sentences
Semicolon
Sentences
Sentence Fragments
Sexist Language and the Indefinite Third Person
Shall versus Will
Shibboleths
Sic
Single Quotation Marks
Skunked Terms
Slashes
Sneak, Sneaked, Snuck
So
So as to
Solution
Spelling Checkers
Split Infinitive
Style
Subjunctives
Substantive
Superscript
Task
Taste
Tense
Than I versus Than Me
Than versus Then
That versus Which
Thesis Statements
Thusly
Titles
Transitions
Transitive versus Intransitive Verbs
Try And
Unique
Usage
Utilize and Utilization
Verbal
Verbs
Vocabulary
Voice
Wasted Words
Whose versus Who's
Who versus Whom
-Wise

畢泠在星期二一月 18, 2005 12:03 pm 作了第 2 次修改

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發表於: 星期二十二月 21, 2004 11:58 pm 文章主題: Guide to Grammar and Style — A

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Guide to Grammar and Style — A

a — b — c — d — e — f — g — h — i — j — l — m
n — o — p — q — r — s — t — u — v — w

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/a.html

A or An.
Use an in place of a when it precedes a vowel sound, not just a vowel. That means it's "an honor" (the h is silent), but "a UFO" (because it's pronounced yoo eff oh).

This confuses people most often with acronyms and other abbreviations: some people think it's wrong to use "an" in front of an abbreviation (like "MRI") because "an" can only go before vowels.

Poppycock: the sound is what matters. It's "an MRI," assuming you pronounce it "em ar eye."

The Above, The Following.
Lists are common in some sorts of writing, introduced by the following and referred to by the above. But you can often make a sentence clearer and punchier with simple pronouns: instead of the above topics, try these topics — the context makes your subject clear.

Absent.
There's nothing wrong with absent as an adjective ("He was absent three days last week"; "Everyone recognized her comment as an insult directed at her absent coworker").

And though it's not very common these days, absent can also be a verb meaning "to keep someone away," as in Hamlet's "Absent thee from felicity awhile."

But absent as a preposition meaning "without" or "in the absence of" is jargon from the worlds of business and law: "Absent further information, we'll proceed as planned." Ick.

It's been around for a while, but do we really need another two-syllable way of saying without? [Entry added 12 Jan. 2005.]

Absolutely.
One of the most overused clichés of our age: the pleasant little monosyllable yes seems to be disappearing in favor of the tetrasyllabic absolutely.

Listen to any interview on radio or television: almost every yes, yeah, or uh-huh is fed through the speaker's pomposity amplifier, and comes out as absolutely on the other side.

Now, there's nothing wrong with the word itself; — still, how 'bout some variety? certainly, yep, damn straight, you bet your bippy — almost anything else would be an improvement. [Entry added 14 Sept. 2004.]

Academies.
Some countries have official bodies to issue rules on linguistic matters: the Académie Française in France and the Accademia della Crusca in Italy are the most famous. Neologisms are among their biggest concerns: they're charged with keeping their languages "pure," and that often takes the form of keeping non-native vocabulary out of their dictionaries.

Their largest job for the last hundred years or so has been resisting the incursion of English words into their languages.

They're mostly fighting losing battles. The Académie fought long and hard against le weekend, preferring the native French fin de semaine. But most Frenchies simply ignore the official ruling, and use the familiar English word. Other common French words include le showbiz and les bluejeans.

The Accademia della Crusca has been a little more tolerant on the whole: the most recent supplement to the official Italian dictionary, for instance, includes "Millennium bug," derived "Dall'inglese millennium 'millennio' e bug 'insetto,'" and defined as "errore di programmazione che, al passaggio di millennio, ha impedito in alcuni vecchi programmi di riconoscere il cambiamento di data, provocando il blocco dei sistemi informatici."

But here's something worth noting: no English-speaking nation has an official academy. The upshot? There's no "official" standard of what's right or wrong in the English language. (And bear in mind that English, though it's by far the most common language in America, isn't the "official" language of the USA, just a de facto standard.)

That doesn't stop plenty of people from issuing decrees; I'm not above it myself, though I hope people take seriously my repeated claims that I'm not trying to issue rules but suggestions. In fact we're all making suggestions, whether we recognize that fact or not.

The suggestions can be wise or foolish, the suggesters likewise — but no one is more "authorized" than anyone else to make 'em.

People regularly write to me asking about some widespread usage, wondering whether "the rules have changed" since they were in school.

I confess I don't understand what the question means. English doesn't really have "rules" in the sense of "decrees handed down by an official body." Though the English language changes, as all languages do, there's no committee to vote on what's right or wrong.

Does that mean "anything goes"? Of course not. Some things are (almost) universally recognized as inferior; more to the point, some shibboleths will make you look stupid before some audiences.

And of course personal taste is always a consideration. But there's no official rule-book, and that means there's no agreeement on many questions. Is it "right" to say "We want to grow the economy"? Is disconnect a noun?

Can you use ironic to refer to things that are merely coincidental? I hate 'em all, but — until the revolution comes, and I become Tyrant — I get only one vote. (Mind you, when that glorious day dawns, things are gonna change: anyone who uses the word lifestyle will be sent to the copper mines, and those who say irregardless will be summarily shot. Meanwhile, though, I just get to grind my teeth quietly.)

See Audience, Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammars, and Rules. [Entry added 21 Dec. 2004.]

Acronyms.
Among the less pleasant by-products of the late, unlamented twentieth century — up there with nuclear waste, thalidomide, and the legislative agenda of Newt Gingrich — is the acronym.

What began as a harmless attempt to shorten long program names has turned into a mania for reducing every committee, gizmo, or plan to a would-be clever acronym.

Resist the urge to create them by the dozen, especially when they don't do any useful work. It's disheartening to think about how many hours it took congressional staffers to find a clumsy phrase that would produce the acronym "USA PATRIOT Act."

By the by, some purists insist the word acronym should apply only to pronounceable combinations of letters: by this standard NASA and SCUBA are acronyms, but MRI and NFL aren't (some use the word "initialism" for these latter abbreviations).

If you care to make the distinction, feel free, but the battle is probably lost, and most people will have no idea what you're talking about.

Note that acronyms are almost unheard of before the twentieth century. If ever an etymology suggests an older word comes from the initials of some phrase — posh from "port out, starboard home," for instance, or "for unlawful carnal knowledge" — the story is more than likely bogus.

For tips on using a or an with acronyms, see A or An. [Entry added 14 Sept. 2004.]

Action Verbs.
Action verbs, as the name reveals, express actions; contrast them with verbs of being. Think of the difference between "I study" (action verb, even if it's not the most exciting action) and "I am a student" (verb of being).

It's often wise to cut down on verbs of being, replacing them (whenever possible) with action verbs; that'll make your writing punchier.

Whatever you do, though, don't confuse action verbs with the active voice, which is the opposite of the passive voice.

Sentences with verbs of being (such as am, is, are, were) aren't necessarily passive sentences, even if they're often weak ones.

See also E-Prime.

Active Voice.
See Passive Voice.

Adjectives and Adverbs.
An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or a pronoun: it answers which one, how many, or what kind. Some examples: "the big one"; "seven books"; "a devoted student."

Adverbs, on the other hand, usually modify verbs, and answer in what manner, to what degree, when, how, how many times, and so forth. Some examples: "He ran quickly"; "I'll do it soon"; "We went twice."

Sometimes adverbs modify adjectives or other adverbs: "She finished very quickly" (very modifies the adverb quickly, which in turn modifies the verb finished); "The work was clearly inadequate" (clearly modifies the adjective inadequate, which in turn modifies work).

The best rule for spotting adverbs is to look for -ly. Be careful, however; not all adverbs end in -ly, and not all -ly words are adverbs: soon, twice, and never are adverbs; friendly, ugly, and northerly are adjectives.

Go easy on the adjectives and adverbs. While modifiers are necessary in any sort of writing, make sure your nouns and verbs are clear and are doing most of the work. As Strunk and White put it, "The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place."

Advise.
"Please advise" — on its own, without, say, "Please advise me about the new rules" — is a common verbal tic of many memo-writers. I find it ugly and inelegant, but I promise not to make too great a fuss as long as it's confined to business writing. [Entry added 12 Jan. 2005.]

Affect versus Effect.
Affect with an a is usually a verb; effect with an e is (usually) a noun. When you affect something, you have an effect on it. The usual adjective is effective.

If the usuals leave you curious, here's the rest of the story: affective as an adjective means "relating to or arousing an emotional reaction"; effect as a verb means "to bring about" or "to accomplish," as in "to effect a change."

Aggravate.
The word aggravate traditionally means "to make worse." You can, for instance, aggravate a problem, situation, or condition: "The new medicine only aggravated my indigestion." (It comes from Latin, and originally means "make heavier": the grav in the middle is from the same root as gravity.)

The more controversial question is whether you can aggravate a person.

It's common to use the word in colloquial speech as a synonym for irritate, exasperate, or annoy: "The salesman's attitude really aggravated me," for instance. It's probably wise, though, to tread carefully in more formal settings, where some people find it inappropriate. [Entry added 21 December 2004.]

Agreement.
One of the fundamental rules of grammar is that the parts of a sentence should agree with each other. It's easier to demonstrate than to define agreement.

Agreement is usually instinctive in native English speakers. In "I has a minute," the verb has doesn't agree with the subject I.

We would say "I have." In "John got their briefcase," assuming John got his own briefcase, their should be his. It's obvious.

Only rarely does it get tricky. A plural noun right in front of the singular verb can throw you off. Consider "Any one of the articles are available": the verb are shouldn't agree with articles, but with the subject, one: the sentence should read, "Any one of the articles is available."

A preposition or a verb that governs two pronouns can also cause problems. In "He wanted you and I for the team," the word I should be me: he wanted you and he wanted me, so he wanted you and me. (Hypercorrection is always a danger in cases like this.

Pay special attention to phrases like you and I, you and she, and so forth.)

See also Each, Every, Data, and Media.

All of.
"All of the ——" can usually be rewritten as "All the ——," "All ——," or "Every ——."

Alot.
Nope: a lot, two words. (That's a lot meaning much, many, often, and so on. There's another word, the verb allot, which means "to distribute or apportion"; but the adjectival or adverbial phrase a lot is always two words.) [Entry added 21 December 2004.]

Alright.
Two words — all right — is preferred. [Entry added 21 Dec. 2004.]

Also.
Avoid beginning sentences with also. There's nothing wrong with it, but it tends to make your writing inelegant.

Alternate, Alternative.
Alternate (as an adjective) traditionally means going back and forth between two things, as in alternate Mondays (i.e., every other Monday).

Alternative means other. Traditionalists prefer an alternative to an alternate plan. (Real traditionalists insist that alternative can be used only in cases where there are two options.)

Among versus Between. The simple rule will rarely fail you: use between for two things, among for more than two.

And at the Beginning.
See But at the Beginning.

And/or.
And/or is sometimes necessary in legal documents, but just clutters other writing. One word or the other will almost always do just as well. See Slashes.

Antecedent.
A technical term in grammar for the word or phrase to which a relative pronoun refers. In a sentence like "She couldn't stand opera, which always sounded like shrieking," the relative pronoun which stands in for the word opera, so opera is the antecedent.

In a sentence like "He couldn't say the word titillate without giggling, which always got him in trouble," the word which refers back not to any individual word, but to the whole preceding clause ("He couldn't say the word titillate without giggling") — the whole thing is the antecedent.

By the way, it's pronounced ant-uh-SEE-dent. [Entry added 11 July 1999]

Anticipate.
To anticipate something is to get ready for it or to do something in advance; this is not the same as expect.

If you expect changes, you think they'll be coming soon; if you anticipate changes, you're preparing to deal with them. Blake certainly didn't expect Modernist poetry, but in some ways he anticipated it by doing similar things a century earlier.

Anticipate is often improperly used (in a love affair with the longer word) where expect is better.

Anxious versus Eager.
Avoid using anxious when you mean eager. Anxious is related to the word anxiety; it traditionally means "worried, uneasy."

It's often used, though, where eager or keen would be more appropriate. You can be anxious about an upcoming exam, but you probably shouldn't tell friends you're anxious to see them this weekend. [Entry added 12 Jan. 2005.]

Any Way, Shape, or Form
Blech. Not only a cliché, and therefore bad enough in its own right, but an uncommonly dumb cliché.

It's usually inappropriate and much wordier than necessary. Will someone please tell me what's wrong with "in any way"? [Entry added 3 November 2000.]

Apostrophe.
The most common way to form a possessive in English is with apostrophe and s: "a hard day's night." After a plural noun ending in s, put just an apostrophe: "two hours' work" (i.e., "the work of two hours").

If a plural doesn't end in s — children, men, people — plain old apostrophe-s: "children's," "men's," "people's." It's never "mens'" or "childrens'."
There's also the opposite case: when a singular noun ends in s. That's a little trickier.

Most style guides prefer s's: James's house. Plain old s-apostrophe (as in James' house) is common in journalism, but most other publishers prefer James's. It's a matter of house style.

Note that, with the exception of the little-used one, the possessives of pronouns never get apostrophes: theirs, not their's; hers, not her's; its, not it's. See It's versus Its.

Apostrophes are sometimes used to make acronyms or other abbreviations plural (another matter of a local house style). My preference: don't use apostrophes to make abbreviations plural — not "They took their SAT's," but "They took their SATs."

The only exception is when having no apostrophe might be confusing: "Two As" is ambiguous (it might be read as the word as); make it "Two A's."

Never use apostrophes as single quotation marks to set off words or phrases (unless you need a quotation within a quotation).

Using an apostrophe to refer to a decade — the 1960's versus the 1960s — is another matter of house style; again, journalists tend to use the apostrophe, and most other publishers don't.

I prefer to omit it: refer to the 1960s or the '60s (the apostrophe indicates that "19" has been omitted), not the 1960's or (worse) the '60's.

See also Microsoft Word for tips on distinguishing apostrophes from single quotation marks. [Entry revised 14 Sept. 2004, with a tiny correction on 21 Oct. 2004; revised again 12 Jan. 2005.]

Apposition.
Two phrases are in apposition when they're logically equivalent and in the same grammatical relation to the rest of the sentence: it's a way of explaining a word or phrase, or giving additional information about it.

It's easier to see in examples than in definitions. "I spent the year in my favorite city, Detroit," puts two phrases — "my favorite city" and "Detroit" — in apposition; the second phrase explains the first.

"I just finished a novel by D. H. Lawrence, the least talented novelist in English" — the phrase "the least talented novelist in English" is in apposition to "D. H. Lawrence," and gives the writer's opinion of Lawrence. (It happens to be correct, by the way — you heard it here first.)

Apposition usually requires commas around the appositional phrase: "The winter of '24, the coldest on record, was followed by a warm summer."

Oh, yeah — don't confuse apposition with opposition. They come from the same Latin root (pono 'put'), but have nothing else to do with one another. [Entry added 11 July 1999]

Articles.
English has two sorts of articles: the definite article (the), and indefinite articles (a and an). They function more or less as adjectives.

The usage of definite and indefinite articles is one of the hardest things for speakers of other languages to master, because it's often entirely arbitrary — why are you in town but in the city?

And British and American usage sometimes differs; wounded Brits end up in hospital, while Yanks are in the hospital. Alas, I don't have any easy rules that are even a little helpful — all I can suggest is that non-native speakers pay close attention to the actual usage of articles. Sorry.

Assure, Ensure, Insure.
While ensure and insure aren't quite so clear cut, assure is very different from both. You assure a person that things will go right by making him confident.

Never use assure in the sense of "Assure that the wording is correct"; you can only assure somebody that it's correct.

Ensure and insure are sometimes used interchangeably, but it may be better to keep them separate. Insuring is the business of an insurance company, i.e., setting aside resources in case of a loss.

Ensure means make sure, as in "Ensure that this is done by Monday."

Brits, by the way — and for all I know, other Commonwealthers — sometimes use assurance where we Yanks use insurance (it's life assurance, but auto insurance, in the UK). But it's not for me to pass laws with Transatlantic jurisdictions. [Entry revised 6 September 1999]

As to Whether.
Plain old whether often does the trick. See Wasted Words.

As versus Like.
See Like versus As.

As Far As.
You need a verb: "As far as such-and-such goes," "As far as such-and-such is concerned." Plain old "As far as such-and-such," widespread though it may be, should be frowned upon. [Entry added 8 April 2001.]

Aspect.
Aspect is a property of verbs that's a little tricky to describe. Here's how the American Heritage Dictionary defines it:

A category of the verb denoting primarily the relation of the action to the passage of time, especially in reference to completion, duration, or repetition.

Okay — what does that mean? Whereas tense describes whether an action happened in the past, present, or future, aspect indicates whether it happened once, happens all the time without stopping, happens intermittently, or is happening now.

Some languages (especially Slavic ones) indicate aspect in their verb forms; in English, we do most of it with auxiliary verbs or adverbs. Consider the differences between these:

I go to class.
I'm going to class.
I went to class.
I was going to class.
I have gone to class.
I had gone to class.
I have been going to class.
I had been going to class.
I will go to class.
I will have gone to class.

And so on.

Linguists tend to use the word perfect to describe a completed action and imperfect to describe one that is (or was) incomplete; they also use progressive or continuous to indicate whether an action is ongoing. Some also have a category for whether action is habitual.

And different languages handle these things differently. English doesn't have many different verb forms for these things, but we can indicate all sorts of differences with our auxiliary verbs; when that's not clear enough, an adverb can resolve ambiguities.

Think that's a mess? — just wait until time-travel is perfected, and have to worry about having been about to have already been going to class. [Entry added 21 Dec. 2004.]

As Yet.
Consider using yet. See Wasted Words.
At This Point, At the Present Time, At This Point in Time.
Never, never, never, never, never. See Currently and Wasted Words.

Audience.
The key to all good writing is understanding your audience. Every time you use language, you engage in a rhetorical activity, and your attention should always be on the effect it will have on your audience.

Think of grammar and style as analogous to, say, table manners. Grammatical "rules" have no absolute, independent existence; there is no Grammar Corps to track you down for using "whose" when "of which" is more proper, just as Miss Manners employs no shock troops to massacre people who eat their salads with fish forks.

You can argue, of course, that the other fork works just as well (or even better), but both the fork and the usage are entirely arbitrary and conventional.

Your job as a writer is to have certain effects on your readers, readers who are continuously judging you, consciously or unconsciously.

If you want to have the greatest effect, you'll adjust your style to suit the audience, however arbitrary its expectations.

A better analogue might be clothing. A college English paper calls for the rough equivalent of the jacket and tie (ladies, you're on your own here).

However useless or ridiculous the tie may be, however outdated its practical value as a garment, certain social situations demand it, and if you go into a job interview wearing a T-shirt and jeans, you only hurt yourself by arguing that the necktie has no sartorial validity.

Your job is to figure out what your audience expects. Likewise, if your audience wants you to avoid ending your sentences with prepositions, no amount of argument over historical validity will help.

But just as you shouldn't go under-dressed to a job interview, you shouldn't over-dress either. A white tie and tails will make you look ridiculous at a barbecue, and a pedantic insistence on grammatical bugbears will only lessen your audience's respect for you.

There are occasions when ain't is more suitable than is not, and the careful writer will take the time to discover which is the more appropriate.

See Diction, Formal Writing, Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammars, Rules, and Taste.

From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.
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   Guide to Grammar and Sty.
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Guide to Grammar and Style — B

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Back-Formation.
Sometimes a root word looks to the untrained eye like a combination of a root and one or more "affixes" — that is, prefixes or suffixes. For instance, some nouns ending in -ar, -er, or -or seem to be made up of a verb with a suffix on the end: burglar, for example, seems to mean "one who burgles," and scavenger seems to come from scavenge. Historically, though, it's the other way 'round: the "simple" or "root" forms are actually derived from the longer words.

There's also the word peas, which seems to be the plural of pea — in fact the original word was pease (as in "pease-porridge hot"), a mass noun, and only later did people assume that if you could have pease, you must be able to have a pea.

People looked at the word sleazy and thought the y at the end was turning the noun sleaze into an adjective — the way frosty comes from frost or wealthy comes from wealth — but in fact there was no noun sleaze until after there was an adjective sleazy.

The resulting words are called back-formations. Here's a list of the more common ones, far from complete: accrete (from accretion), destruct (from destruction), diagnose (from diagnosis), edit (from editor), emote (from emotion), enthuse (from enthusiasm), escalate (from escalator), flab (from flabby), funk (from funky), injure (from injury), intuit (from intuition), kidnap (from kidnapper), orate (from oration), peddle (from peddler), televise (from television), and tweeze (from tweezers).

These back-formations aren't necessarily wrong; most of those above are now part of standard English. And of course some can be used for comic effect: you might say someone is gruntled, for instance, or ept, or chalant. (Check out Jack Winter's "How I Met My Wife," published in The New Yorker, for a whole bunch of back-formations from negatives.)

But when they're new, they'll strike many people as odd. Liaise, for instance — which seems to be the root of the noun liaison — is actually derived from it; and in America, at least, it's still struggling for acceptance. Be careful. [Entry added 3 Jan. 2005.]

Basically.
Almost always useless. Qualifiers such as basically, essentially, totally, &c. rarely add anything to a sentence; they're the written equivalent of "Um." See Wasted Words, and read it twice.

Basis.
See On a —— Basis.

Being That.
A dreadfully overused idiom (probably coming from "it being the case that"), favored by those who want to sound more impressive. Avoid it. Use because, since, or something similarly direct.

Between versus Among.
See Among versus Between.

Block Quotations.
Short quotations — say, no more than three or four lines — usually appear in the text surrounded by quotation marks, "like this." Longer direct quotations, though — and sometimes shorter quotations of poetry — should be set off as block quotations or extracts, thus:
Notice that the quotation is indented on both sides: most word processors make that easy. Notice, too, that you don't use quotation marks around a block quotation: the indention (not "indentation") is enough to indicate it's a quotation.

Some house styles prefer block quotations to be single-spaced, others like them double-spaced; that's not something to fret about unless you're writing for publication.

Always be sure to include proper citations in block quotations; the usual route is to put the citation in parentheses after the closing punctuation in the quotation itself.

Bluntness.
Writing is too often wimpy. Don't be afraid to be blunt. Instead of "There appear to be indications that the product heretofore referred to may be lacking substantial qualitative consummation, suggesting it may be incommensurate with the standards previously established by this department," try "It's bad" or "It doesn't work."

Of course you should be sensitive to your reader's feelings — there's no need to be vicious or crude, and saying "It sucks" won't win you many friends — but don't go too far in the opposite direction. Call 'em as you see 'em.

Boldface.
There's no reason to use boldface in an academic paper; spend your time writing, not fiddling with the word processor. See Fonts, Italics, and Titles.

Brackets.
See Interpolation.

British Spellings.
If you use British spellings, use them consistently. Inconsistent British spellings are an affectation. (Of course other English-speaking countries have their own rules, which usually look to us like a medley of British and American spellings.)

Jeremy Smith has assembled a catalogue of words that have different spellings in America and Britain.

Bugbears.
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over Windows versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs.

Pedantic and vicious debates over knotty matters such as Prepositions at the End, That versus Which, and Split Infinitives may be entertaining to those who enjoy cockfights, but do little to improve writing. Know as much as you can about the rules, but strive above all for clarity and grace.

Think always of the effect you'll have on your audience. Over time you'll come to trust your ear, which will be disciplined by reading the best authors and by constant practice at writing. See also Prescriptive versus Descriptive Grammars and Taste.

But at the Beginning.
Contrary to what your high school English teacher told you, there is no reason not to begin a sentence with but or and; in fact, these words often make a sentence more forceful and graceful.

They are almost always better than beginning with however or additionally. Beginning with but or and does make your writing less formal; — but worse things could happen to most writing than becoming less formal.

From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.
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From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.

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Capable.
The phrase is capable of ——ing can usually be better rendered as is able to ——, or even turned into an active verb with can ——. See Wasted Words.

Capitalization.
It's customary to capitalize:
The first word of a sentence;
The first word in a line of poetry;
The major words in the title of a work;
Proper nouns (names), including most adjectives derived from proper nouns (Spanish from Spain, Freudian from Freud);
Personal titles when they come before a name (Mr. Smith, Ms. Jones, Dr. X, Captain Beefheart, Reverend Gary Davis, Grand Vizier Lynch);
All (or most) letters in an abbreviation (NASA, MRI).

It's sometimes tricky to figure out what counts as a proper noun: it's customary to capitalize Renaissance and Romantic when they refer to historical periods, but not when they mean any old rebirth or something related to romance. (Even more confusing, Middle Ages is usually capitalized, but medieval isn't, even though they refer to the same thing, and one is just a Latin translation of the other. Go figure.)

It's common to capitalize President when referring to one President of the United States, but you'd refer to all the presidents (no cap) of the U.S., and the presidents of corporations don't warrant caps unless you're using president as a title. Go figure.

In some house styles, the first word of an independent clause after a colon gets a cap: "It leads us to one conclusion: Not enough rock bands use horn sections." I don't much like it, but de stilis domorum non est disputandum — there's no arguing about house styles.

By the way, DON'T USE ALL CAPITALS FOR EMPHASIS — it makes your writing look amateurish, and it's more difficult to read. (Mixed upper- and lowercase is easier to read, since the eye recognizes the overall shape of the words, with their ascenders and descenders.

ALL CAPS simply appear as blocks, and readers have to slow down to figure them out.)

See House Styles and Titles. [Entry revised 14 Sept. 2004]

Centralized.
Use central whenever possible. See Personalized.

Century.
The rule for hyphenating compounds like twentieth century: if the phrase is used as a noun, no hyphen; if it's used as an adjective, hyphenate it.

So: "It was one of the greatest disasters of the twentieth century," but "It was one of the greatest twentieth-century disasters." (Since twenty-first is already hyphenated, you refer to twenty-first-century disasters.)

That's the general rule for compound phrases: hyphenate them when they're used as adjectives.

"The new plan will help the middle class," but "The new plan helps middle-class workers." [Entry added 14 Sept. 2004.]

Citation.
The importance of accurate citation cannot be overstated: a paper without proper citations is open to charges of plagiary.

It's not simply a matter of having the minimum of five footnotes in your research paper to keep the teacher happy, and it's not simply a matter of avoiding honor-code trouble.

Careful citation shows your reader that you've done your homework, and allows him or her to check up on you. It amounts to laying your intellectual cards on the table.

Cite your source for every direct quotation and every borrowed idea. Two standards are common in English papers: that of the MLA Style Guide and that of The Chicago Manual of Style. Either will do.

The MLA style calls for a list of "Works Cited" at the end of a paper in standard bibliographical form, alphabetical by author:

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels. Edited by Herbert Davis. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965.

Citations in the text of the paper would then include the author's name (with a year or abbreviated title if more than one work is cited) and page number; for instance:
". . . the most pernicious race of odious little vermin" (Swift 120).

The Chicago style gives a full citation in a footnote (or endnote) on the first quotation in this form:
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965), p. 120.
Subsequent citations in the text include the page number in parentheses, with an author's name only when necessary:
"Girl threading an invisible Needle with invisible Silk" (p. 92).
Either style is acceptable, but be consistent.

For full details see the MLA Style Guide or the Chicago Manual of Style. (Other disciplines, mind you, have their own style guides; psychologists use APA style, and scientists have their own as well. You'll do well to learn the most common standard for your major.)

All citations should appear under the name of the main author, but should include the names of editors, translators, and so on (writers of introductions aren't necessary).

Include the city, publisher, and year of publication. For works of prose, give a page number or a range of pages; for works of poetry, give a line number or range of lines.

Clarity.
Along with grace, one of the paramount writer's virtues. Your job is to make yourself clear to your reader. Let nothing get in the way. Many of the entries in this guide — especially Audience, Precision, Obfuscation, and Vocabulary — address clarity.

Clearly, Obviously, Undoubtedly.
My English professor instincts kick in — my Spidey-Sense starts tingling — whenever I see these words. Too often they're used when something is unclear and doubtful, but the author simply doesn't know how to make the point convincingly.

Clumsy writers want to make an argument but don't know how to bridge some conceptual gap. Instead of painstakingly working out the logic, they simply state their conclusion with an obviously (when it's not at all obvious).

There's nothing inherently wrong with the words, but be sure you use them honestly. [Entry added 12 Jan. 2005.]

Clichés.
"Avoid clichés" is such common advice that it's almost a cliché itself, but no worse for that. It's stated especially clearly by Pinney:

[Clichés] offer prefabricated phrasing that may be used without effort on your part. They are thus used at the expense of both individuality and precision, since you can't say just what you mean in the mechanical response of a cliché.

George Orwell's advice is overstated for effect, but it's still good to bear it in mind: "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

If you're depending on a stock phrase, you're letting someone else do half your thinking for you.
A comprehensive catalogue of clichés is:�"؉�
    天下文壇天下文壇畢泠  2005-05-08 12:27
http://yuhsia.com/ccb/index.pl

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