About William Safire: William Lewis Safire was an American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter.
Stop worrying about the 'dumbing down' of our language by bloggers, tweeters, cableheads and MSM thumbsuckers engaged in a 'race to the bottom' of the page by little minds confined to little words.
Sometimes I know the meaning of a word but am tired of it and feel the need for an unfamiliar, especially precise or poetic term, perhaps one with a nuance that flatters my readership's exquisite sensitivity.
When I need to know the meaning of a word, I look it up in a dictionary.
A book should have an intellectual shape and a heft that comes with dealing with a primary subject.
A reader ought to be able to hold it and become familiar with its organized contents and make it a mind's manageable companion.
The noun phrase straw man, now used as a compound adjective as in 'straw-man device, technique or issue,' was popularized in American culture by 'The Wizard of Oz.'
When articulation is impossible, gesticulation comes to the rescue.
Do not put statements in the negative form. And don't start sentences with a conjunction. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. Never use a long word when a diminu...
Took me a while to get to the point today, but that is because I did not know what the point was when I started.
In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a f...
Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
Today, war of necessity is used by critics of military action to describe unavoidable response to an attack like that on Pearl Harbor that led to our prompt, official declaration of war, while they characterize as unwise wars of choice the wars in Ko...
