I’ve also noticed a new reason for avoiding “I”: Americans are unwilling to go out on a limb. A generation ago our leaders told us where they stood a… - William Zinsser

A generation ago our leaders told us where they stood and what they believed. Today they perform strenuous verbal feats to escape that fate.

It was also a method of getting students to learn who were afraid of learning.

If you’re not a person who says “indeed” or “moreover,” or who calls someone an individual (“he’s a fine individual”), please don’t write it.

Most writers sow adjectives almost unconsciously into the soil of their prose to make it more lush and pretty, and the sentences become longer and longer as they fill up with stately elms and frisky kittens and hard-bitten detectives and sleepy lagoons.