Lynne Truss Quotes

To reason with poorly chosen words is like using a pair of scales with inaccurate weights.

He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.

The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language.

I love revising things, because you see how you can get the language to get closer to intention. You know there are three ways to say X thing, but one will say it better than the other two. And in saying it better, it gets you closer to something.

It's no use of talking unless people understand what you say.

The chief virtue that language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use of unfamiliar words.

I preferred the simplest vocabulary.

When you use words loosely, without care and consideration, you erode trust in yourself and in what you're saying. When you squander words, you diminish your power.

Clarity of communication is important.

I speak English my way, but people understand it. You can understand everything I say, and that's the most important thing.

It is a difficult task to talk to the purpose, and to put life and perspicuity into our discourse.

Proper punctuation is both the sign and the cause of clear thinking.

If you can't make yourself understood by your friends, you'll be in trouble when your enemies come for you.

When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

The reason to stand up for punctuation is that without it there is no reliable way of communicating meaning.

I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.

Never mistake legibility for communication.

A multitude of words is probably the most formidable means of blurring and obscuring thought. There is no thought, however momentous, that cannot be expressed lucidly in 200 words.

The more words you have at your disposal, the more precisely you can express yourself.

When I was twenty I was in love with words, a wordsmith. I didn't know enough to know when people were letting words get in their way. Now I like the words to disappear, like a transparent curtain.

Writing and reading and speaking with specificity and skill has never seen more important to me than it does at this moment. It's what's between us and chaos.

My tendency is to want to say to the person, "Do you understand why I feel this way?" I usually do say that. And sometimes it doesn't go well. By this I mean we hit an impasse again. Not that I need to hear exactly what I want to hear, but I need to know I am heard. Those moments make for a better friendship. But I can't let it go. For good or bad.

I thought clarity of communication was the most important thing in writing, and if you really cared about getting your idea across, you would say it in the most straightforward way possible. Later, in college and grad school, I came to realize that language is a technology like any other, and that it's always evolving - clarity of expression is always evolving.

It doesn't matter how much we know, it matters how clearly others can understand what we know.

Use the right word, not its second cousin.