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Constance Hale Quote

The flesh of prose gets its shape and strength from the bones of grammar.

Constance Hale

The flesh of prose gets its shape and strength from the bones of grammar.

Tags: grammar, prose

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Some writers write to forget. Some forget to write.

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What really alarms me about President Bush's 'War on Terrorism' is the grammar. How do you wage war on an abstract noun? How is 'Terrorism' going to surrender? It's well known, in philological circles...

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What the semicolon's anxious supporters fret about is the tendency of contemporary writers to use a dash instead of a semicolon and thus precipitate the end of the world. Are they being alarmist?

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Youir're doing this wrong.

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Youir're doing this wrong.

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People who cannot distinguish between good and bad language, or who regard the distinction as unimportant, are unlikely to think carefully about anything else.

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Write like you speak with the 'rhythms of human speech,' as William Zinsser said, and in as few words as possible. Use action verbs to carry water.

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And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.

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Evolution did not design us to believe only true facts, nor to buy only useful products, nor to say only meaningful sentences

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About Constance Hale

Constance Hale is an American writer and critic based in San Francisco. Her journalism has appeared in metropolitan newspapers and national magazines, but she is best known for her books on language: Sin and Syntax; Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch; and Wired Style. She teaches writing and editing at Harvard University and the University of California at Berkeley.