In terms of craft, there’s no excuse for losing readers through sloppy workmanship. If they doze off in the middle of your article because you have b… - William Zinsser

Don’t dialogue with someone you can talk to.

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.

I never think of him as a scholar assaulting me with how much he knows, but as a teacher eager to share a lifelong passion for the subject.