Quotes & Sayings About Word Choice In Writing

Whether the vessel is a legal document or a rap song, language is often chosen ot exclude. To use a scholarly phrase, "discourse communities" are often gated,so it's the good writer's job to offer readers a set of keys. — Roy Peter Clark

Every word Martone sets down, finally, a choice that limits the universe, their trail across the page a fossil record of some life's life-story. — Michael Martone

Beautiful Lies is a book every woman should read. Jennifer Strickland weaves the powerful story of her life throughout each chapter while emphasizing transformational truths from God's Word. Her vulnerability, exquisite writing style, and practical take-home applications make this book the ideal choice for personal or for small group use. — Carol Kent

One breaks into the canon only by aesthetic strength. — Harold Bloom

Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on.
"I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least
at least I mean what I say
that's the same thing, you know."
"Not the same thing a bit!" said the Hatter. "You might just as well say that "I see what I eat" is the same thing as "I eat what I see"! — Lewis Carroll

A word out of place or an interesting choice of vocabulary can spawn a whole character. — Sara Sheridan

Nonfiction ties your hands a bit, and just like writing poetry in rhyme, it can force you to make more brutal decisions in terms of word choice, plot, etc. — Emily Susan Rapp

The best way to ensure that your writing is as good as you can make it is simply to consult your imagination and judgment as you write and take note of whether you are using an expression that has found its way into the stream simply because it's always there, swirling lifelessly in an eddy, where it was recently deposited by some other writer you have read. — Joseph Epstein

You want the greatest trick for writing a novel? Here it is: imagine urgently whispering your story into one person's ear - and only one. This one visualization will clarify every word choice you make. — Julianna Baggott

I'm still learning so much with every play I write. So I wrestle with word choice, rhythm in final drafts. I think you have to be ruthless. — Stephen Karam

Perhaps defining a self begins with simply making the first choice, simply rising up and deciding what you desire, and then methodically, like writing, putting one word after the other until you have created a whole self and a whole life in the process. — Michele Rosenthal

Writing has been sewn into my soul and I'm afraid my thoughts have no choice but to be the truth to the story and my hand the connection between the pen and paper. With every word written, my heart finds its beat and inspiration fuels the desire to fulfill this need. — Amber M. Royse

To speak much is one thing; to speak to the point another! — Sophocles

If you wanted to go on from the end of The Hobbit I think the ring would be your inevitable choice as the link. If then you wanted a large tale, the Ring would at once acquire a capital letter; and the Dark Lord would immediately appear. As he did, unasked, on the hearth at Bag End as soon as I came to that point. So the essential Quest started at once. But I met a lot of things along the way that astonished me. Tom Bombadil I knew already; but I had never been to Bree. Strider sitting in the corner of the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than Frodo did. The Mines of Moria had been a mere name; and of Lothlorien no word had reached my mortal ears till I came there.
(J.R.R. Tolkien to W.H. Auden, June 7, 1955.) — J.R.R. Tolkien

He was telling an interesting anecdote full of exciting words like "encyclopedia" and "rhododendron". — A.A. Milne

Words and magic are two powerful forces that can change the world. — Amy Neftzger

In an idealized world, we would all be able to do what our English teachers told us to do, which is to write beautiful prose where enthusiasm is conveyed by word choice and grammar. — Will Schwalbe

If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it. — Poppy Z. Brite

I have talents that I'm not supposed to have: I can tell who crushes on who by how they stand, I can read strides, I can hear the tonal differences between an alto and a soprano singing the same line so clearly that to me they sing entirely different notes, and I can read through the lines and tell when a person doesn't need to be writing at all. That, that is what makes me a snob, because I cannot abide a person putting pen to paper or fingers on keys when they don't need to, when word choice is not as relevant and demanding and essential to them as breathing and syntax is about being correct and not about being evocative. — Julia Bascom

No one is asking, let alone demanding, that you write. The world is not waiting with bated breath for your article or book. Whether or not you get a single word on paper, the sun will rise, the earth will spin, the universe will expand. Writing is forever and always a choice - your choice. — Beth Mende Conny

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral. — Garth Stein