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“He implied without saying."
...I scarcely had the heart to cross out "without quite saying" and to note in the margin, politely and succinctly, "”
― Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
...I scarcely had the heart to cross out "without quite saying" and to note in the margin, politely and succinctly, "”
― Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
“All this said, there’s nothing wrong with sentences constructed in the passive voice – you’re simply choosing where you want to put the sentence’s emphasis – and I see nothing objectionable in, say, The floors were swept, the beds made, the rooms aired out. Since the point of interest is the cleanness of the house and not the identity of the cleaner. But many a sentence can be improved by putting its true protagonist at the beginning, so that’s something to be considered.fn10”
― Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style: The UK Edition
― Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style: The UK Edition
“A reversal is a total 180.*10 If you do a total 360, you’re facing the same direction as when you began.”
― Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
― Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
“People who are in the business of hating the relatively new-fashioned use of “begs the question” hate it vehemently, and they hate it loudly. Unfortunately, subbing in “raises the question” or “inspires the query” or any number of other phrasings fools no one; one can always detect the deleted “begs the question,” a kind of prose pentimento, for those of you who were paying attention in art history class or have read Lillian Hellman’s thrilling if dubiously accurate memoir.”
― Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
― Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
“Beyond this [checking for spelling, punctuation, and grammar] is where copyediting can elevate itself from what sounds like something a passably sophisticated piece of software should be able to accomplish--it can't, not for style, not for grammar (even if it thinks it can), and not even for spelling (more on spelling, much more on spelling, later)--to true craft. On a good day, it achieves something between a really thorough teeth cleaning--as a writer once described it to me--and a whiz-bang magic act.”
― Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
― Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
Gary’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Gary’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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