"The author's main purpose in this book is to teach precision in writing;
and of good writing (which, essentially, is clear thinking made visible)
precision is the point of capital concern. It is attained by choice of the word
that accurately and adequately expresses what the writer has in mind, and by
exclusion of that which either denotes or connotes something else. As Quintilian
puts it, the writer should so write that his reader not only may, but must,
understand.
Few words have more than one literal and serviceable meaning, however
many metaphorical, derivative, related, or even unrelated, meanings
lexicographers may think it worth while to gather from all sorts and conditions
of men, with which to bloat their absurd and misleading dictionaries. This
actual and serviceable meaning�not always determined by derivation, and seldom
by popular usage�is the one affirmed, according to his light, by the author of
this little manual of solecisms. Narrow etymons of the mere scholar and loose
locutions of the ignorant are alike denied a standing."
- Excerpted from "Write It Right, A Little Blacklist of Literary
Faults"
