Tuesday, June 21, 2011

The Accidents of Style

From Charles Harrington Elster, The Accidents of Style: "What readers crave is writing that respects their intelligence, not writing that mimics their vulgarisms" (p. 35). I recommend this careful, witty, and needful corrective to sloppy writing.

1 comment:

Mike Aubrey said...

That quote by itself is excellent and 100% true, but it's hard to respect a writer with a sloppy knowledge of the English language who merely piles up the nonsensical prescriptive poppycock page after page. Anyone can write book on how to write well if they simply steal all of the silly rules that numerous (anti-)grammarians have been making up without empirical evidence for the past century or so.