Far too many Americans are prevented from doing useful work because they never learned to express themselves. Contrary to general belief, writing isn… - William Zinsser

Adjectives are used as nouns (“greats,” “notables”). Nouns are used as verbs (“to host”), or they are chopped off to form verbs (“enthuse,” “emote”), or they are padded to form verbs (“beef up,” “put teeth into”). This is a world where eminent people are “famed” and their associates are “staffers,” where the future is always “upcoming” and someone is forever “firing off” a note. Nobody in America has sent a note or a memo or a telegram in years. Famed diplomat Condoleezza Rice, who hosts foreign notables to beef up the morale of top State Department staffers, sits down and fires off a lot of notes. Notes that are fired off are always fired in anger and from a sitting position. What the weapon is I’ve never found out.

In his monthly column in Natural History magazine and in books like The Panda’s Thumb I’ve found myself caught up in the riddles of evolution and the miracles of the natural world. Gould never forgets one of nature’s oldest laws: that everybody loves a story. Every month he tells me a remarkable story and then tells me why he thinks it came out the way it did.

Writers who think THEY are being criticized when only that writing is being criticized are beyond a teacher's reach. Writing can only be learned when a writer coldly separates himself from what he has written and looks at it with the objectivity of a plumber examining a newly piped bathroom to see if he got all the joints tight.