"Give me my typewriter and my dictionary, and just let me suffer!"
— Robertson Davies
"Writing is at the mercy of the largest number of amateurs—almost the entire population."
— Jacques Barzun
"Nearly every fiction writer in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope, and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom."
— Roald Dahl
Below are ten abbreviations of Latin terms. Do you know what they stand for in Latin and in English?
1. MS or ms.
2. PS or P.S.
3. i.e.
4. e.g.
5. N.B. or n.b.
6. c. or ca.
7. et al.
8. cf.
9. q.v.
10. ibid.
Answers are on the Comments page.
To Err Is Inhuman
“I’m afraid that surprise, shock, and regret is the fate of authors when they finally see themselves on the page. . . . Seeing one’s inadequate English frozen into type is a humiliating experience.” — Julia Child, My Life in France
“I think of it as it could have been, with its prolixities docked, its dullnesses enlivened, its fads eliminated, its truths multiplied.” — From the dedication page of
H. W. Fowler's Modern English Usage (1926)
CHARLIE'S LATEST
The Accidents of Style is a crash course in careful usage.
Remember the old rule: “A good writer never ends a sentence with a preposition”? Well, it’s too bad it was ever taught, because it is wrong, wrong, wrong. If you think I don’t know what I'm talking about, then I dare you to say, “You don’t know about what you’re talking.” (more…)
