Constance Hale Quotes

• Verbose is not a synonym for literary.

  Constance Hale

  Synonym

  Constance Hale (2001). “Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose”, p.16, Three Rivers Press

  44 Copy quote

• A sentence can offer a moment of quiet, it can crackle with energy or it can just lie there, listless and uninteresting. What makes the difference? The verb.

  Constance Hale

  Lying, Differences, Energy

  19 Copy quote

• Writers dream of sentences that sail through the waters of thought. We try to control their shape and size, and we struggle to let them glide, rather than thrash at sea.

  Constance Hale

  Dream, Struggle, Sea

  11 Copy quote

• Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason.

  Constance Hale

  Writing, Passive Voice, Arrows

  "Mistakes were made" by Lisa Dusenbery, therumpus.net. May 02, 2012.

  13 Copy quote

• The flesh of prose gets its shape and strength from the bones of grammar.

  Constance Hale

  Shapes, Flesh, Bones

  Constance Hale (2013). “Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose”, p.11, Three Rivers Press

  5 Copy quote

• Voice is the je ne sais quoi of spirited writing. It separates brochures and brilliance, memo and memoir, a ship's log and The Old Man and the Sea. The best writers stamp prose with their own distinctive personality; their timbre and tone are as recognizable as their voices on the phone. To cultivate voice, you must listen for the music of language-the vernacular, the syntactic tics, the cadences.

  Constance Hale

  Writing, Men, Sea

  Constance Hale (2001). “Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose”, Broadway

  9 Copy quote

• Our word choices give a sentence its luster, and they deserve intense attention.

  Constance Hale

  Giving, Choices, Our Words

  5 Copy quote

• Be bold. Be fast. Get to the point right away. The best email communication is simple and clear.

  Constance Hale

  Communication, Simple, Email

  5 Copy quote

• Ultimately, whether we are writing posts, paragraphs, essays, arguments, memoirs, monographs or even just the Great American Tweet, writing is and should be a grand adventure.

  Constance Hale

  Writing, Adventure, Argument

  5 Copy quote

• Writers today must navigate the shifting verbal currents of the post-Gutenberg era. When does jargon end and a new vernacular begin? Where's the line between neologism and hype? What's the language of the global village? How can we keep pace with technology without getting bogged down in buzzwords? Is it possible to write about machines without losing a sense of humanity and poetry?

  Constance Hale

  Writing, Technology, Hype

  5 Copy quote

• Language can still be an adventure if we remember that words can make a kind of melody. In novels, news stories, memoirs and even to-the-point memos, music is as important as meaning. In fact, music can drive home the meaning of words.

  Constance Hale

  Home, Adventure, News Stories

  "Writing for the ear" by Lisa Dusenbery, therumpus.net. June 13, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

• In writing, the connection between storyteller and audience is just as important. By using some subtle devices, a narrator can reach out to the reader and say, 'We’re in this together.'

  Constance Hale

  Writing, Important, Together

  5 Copy quote

• I’m a sucker for this stuff. The @ is called chiocciola (snail) in Italian! The & was once taught as a letter of the alphabet! The manicule has been with us for a millennium! Thank you, Keith Houston, for bringing these little mysteries out of the shadows of typographic history.

  Constance Hale

  Italian, Shadow, Houston

  7 Copy quote

• Over the course of several articles, I will give you the tools to become a sentence connoisseur as well as a sentence artisan. Each of my lessons will give you the insight to appreciate fine sentences and the vocabulary to talk about them.

  Constance Hale

  Vocabulary, Appreciate, Giving

  5 Copy quote

• There is no one way to render an idea. Let’s explore how masters of the sentence play with length and style to make their sentences distinctive.

  Constance Hale

  Play, Ideas, Style

  5 Copy quote

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