Wording Quotes

So which guideline should a writer follow, "Avoid elegant variation" or "Don't use a word twice on one page"? Traditional style guides don't resolve the contradiction, but psycholinguistics can help. Wording should not be varied capriciously, because in general people assume that if someone uses two different words they're referring to two different things. And as we shall soon see, wording should never be varied when a writer is comparing or contrasting two things. But wording should be varied when an entity is referred to multiple times in quick succession and repeating the name would sound monotonous or would misleadingly suggest that a new actor had entered the scene. ~ Steven Pinker

Dominique Bauby (1997), who was the editor in chief of the French Elle magazine, has authored a small and extremely sensitive and articulated work, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. His wording is amazingly precise. Bauby suffered a cerebrovascular accident to his brain stem in December 1995. The result was "locked-in ~ Susan Roos

I want to be able to speak with errors in my wording, errors in my grammar. When you type things into Google search, it corrects your words. With speech, I want it to be general enough, smart enough, to know 'No, he couldn't have meant these words that I think he said. He must have really meant something similar.' ~ Steve Wozniak

Simple and to the point is always the best way to get your point across. ~ Guy Kawasaki

She hugged him and said, "Flowers and ravens," because she wanted him to know she remembered.
Then she hugged Matthew and said, "My love," because he was her favorite.
She said nothing at all to Declan, because he wasn't there. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

So it goes."
Unlike many of these quotes, the repeated refrain from Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five isn't notable for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion - and dismissal of emotion - it packs into three simple, world-weary words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything. There's a reason this quote graced practically every elegy written for Vonnegut over the past two weeks (yes, including ours): It neatly encompasses a whole way of life. More crudely put: "Shit happens, and it's awful, but it's also okay. We deal with it because we have to. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

GARDENS OR FIELDS? Craig Blomberg points out that in Matthew's parable of the mustard seed, the sower sows his seed in a "field" (agros, Matt 13:31), while in Luke the sowing is in a "garden" (kepos, Luke 13:19). Jews never grew mustard plants in gardens, but always out on farms, while Greeks in the Mediterranean basin did the opposite. It appears that each gospel writer was changing the word that Jesus used in Mark - the word for "earth" or "ground" (ge, Mark 4:31) - for the sake of his hearers. There is a technical contradiction between the Matthean and Lukan terms, states Blomberg, "but not a material one. Luke changes the wording precisely so that his audience is not distracted from ... the lesson by puzzling over an ... improbable practice." The result is that Luke's audience "receives his teaching with the same impact as the original audience."22 ~ Timothy Keller

Literary truth is not the truth of the biographer or the reporter, it's not a police report or a sentence handed down by a court. It's not even the plausibility of a well-constructed narrative. Literary truth is entirely a matter of wording and is directly proportional to the energy that one is able to ­impress on the sentence. And when it works, there is no stereotype or cliché of popular literature that resists it. It reanimates, revives, subjects ­everything to its needs. ~ Elena Ferrante

Listen, I noticed you haven't brought your swimsuit home yet. I hope you're not still getting in the water. It's too cold for swimming, Emma."
I do my own laundry. Digging around in my drawers is the only way she could have "noticed" anything missing. Does she also look for condoms or other incriminating evidence moms usually scavenge for? Does she come home to scavenge? The thought tickles my temper. Making a mental note to by a new bathing suit strictly for Galen's house, I say, "You're telling me this? You know how cold-natured I am." My laugh is loud enough to be suspicious, but Mom doesn't seem to notice. Rachel smirks though.
"Don't try to tell me you and Galen haven't figured out how to stay warm in the water."
"Mom!"
"Just promise you won't get in the water," she says, her voice tight again. "I don't need you getting sick."
"Fine. I promise."
"And be home before dawn this time. I dare you to bring home anything less than an A on your report card after this. I double dog dare you."
I mouth the words into the phone as she says them; you'd think she'd at least change the wording after all these years. It's her go-to threat for just about everything. But somehow, it doesn't work this time. There's no bluster behind it. She's getting soft lately, and I think it has to do with the night I accused her of adopting me. ~ Anna Banks

Unidentified One sounded even more amused. "You had better have the weapon we were told of, or I'll take your ribs out one by one and break them in front of your little face."
I saved that for future reference. Unidentified One seemed to have gone to some trouble with the wording of that threat, it would be a shame if they never experienced it firsthand. ~ Martha Wells

The notion that we are products of our environment is our greatest sin; we are products of our choices.
Margaret Mead
(this may not be her exact wording, but it's close enough). ~ Margaret Mead

I try to be careful about wording. One of the things I've tried to combat in my blog is the notion that journalists are arrogant and unconcerned with the readership. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

The butter was real of course. Daddy had a fetish about using only real butter. As he handed it to me, I noticed the hue was brash and yellow, almost like the artificial color used in the making of cheap Margarine. The boysenberry preserves were recently purchased. The glass had a bright red foil label with intricate embossed wording and as I turned the lid, I heard the sucking sound of the seal breaking. Daddy looked over, concerned, until I carefully laid the jar of jam on the counter, pushing it toward him. "I can do everything Tweetie Bird," he said to me. I smiled, embarrassed at my old nickname from when I was a child and nodded my head. ~ ~Theresa Griffin Kennedy~

Poetry is a second translation of the soul's feeling; it must be rendered into thought, and thought must change its nebulous robe of semi-wording into definite language, before it reaches another heart. Music is a first translation of feeling, needing no second, but entering the heart direct. ~ Frances Ridley Havergal

It ain't bragging if you've done it. There's nothing wrong with being proud of doing something well. In fact, if you intend to do something creative for a living, it's absolutely essential.
[check for wording] Proper pride says, "I'm good at this." Improper pride says, "I'm better than you. ~ James A. Owen

At bottom, textual criticism for virtually all other ancient literature relies on creative conjectures, or imaginative guesses, at reconstructing the wording of the original. Not so with the New Testament. ~ Daniel B. Wallace

Ultimately, all church mission statements have certain common threads. They contain a vertical dimension such as loving and obeying God. And they emphasize a horizontal dimension: how Christians treat those both inside and outside the church. They answer the question of why God left the church here on earth. The secret of success is not the wording but the fact that the people of the board have dug the mission statement out of the Bible for themselves, have decided to commit their church to it, and have made it theirs. ~ Carl F. George

It is not the myth that falls out of date, it is the way of wording it. New voices are endlessly needed to swell their throats with song. Poetry is the unbroken lineage. ~ Peter Grey

Scholars call it [the Torah] the Masoretic text. The Masoretes were Hebrew scribes of the first centuries of the present era. They fixed the wording and spelling of the Bible; since then it has not changed. It has long been a matter of critical controversy as to just how accurate the Masoretes were; for one thing, did they have a true text from ancient sources, or did they invent and corrupt? Opinion has swayed back and forth on this point. The excitement over the Dead Sea Scrolls came in part from their substantial authentication of the Masoretic Isaiah. ~ Herman Wouk

I'm too tired, too tired hearing your mean-wording, your pretending, your name-calling, sorry, not sorry, words you write, I should forgive because you didn't mean them right? Oh plus I deserved them? Alright. ~ Coco J. Ginger

Hiking is great because it's a lifelong sport and you're outdoors, active, so whether you call that a sport or a hobby or a recreation, I think the wording - it's a great way to get exercise, and it can be as challenging as you want to make it. ~ Jennifer Pharr Davis

On the wall of this yard there was the wording, painted in high letters: Reliable Autos. We get you there.
"Get you where?" asked Fanwell. Chobie smiled. "Where you want to get. That's where everybody's heading, after all. To where they want to get. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

There is a celebrated aphorism insisting that the best way to live is to 'work like you don't need the money, dance like nobody is watching, and love like you've never been hurt.' ... After years of hearing and reading these lines I have decided to tell the truth: the original version is wrong. There is a grave error in the wording of this adage. The correct version should go as follows:
Love like you don't need the money,
Work like nobody is watching,
Dance like you've never been hurt.
See? Doesn't that make more sense? ~ Gina Barreca

... in the Greek wording of the Nicene Creed ... we confess God to be literally the "poet of heaven and earth" (poieten ouranou kai ges). ~ Vitor Westhelle

One always has a choice. ~ Dona Wording

The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. ~ Frank Herbert

People say I love you all the time - when they say, 'take an umbrella, it's raining,' or 'hurry back,' or even 'watch out, you'll break your neck.' There are hundreds of ways of wording it - you just have to listen for it, my dear. ~ John Patrick

Ryodan doesn't like Mac. He never has. She got between him and his best boy-bud. I give him a look. "I'll tell you a secret, Ryodan. You mess with her, Barrons'll kill you." I drag a finger across my neck. "Just like that. You aren't all that. Barrons'll stomp your ass, hand's down."

He smiles faintly. "I'll be damned. You have a crush on Barrons."

"I do not have a crush - "

"You do, too. It's all over your face. Anybody could see it."

"Sometimes, boss, you're just wrong."

"I'm never wrong. You might as well take out a billboard. 'Dani O'Malley thinks Jericho Barrons is hot.' My offer to teach you is still open. Save you from future embarrassment. If I can see it on your face, he can, too. "

"He never figured it out before," I grumble then realize I just admitted it. Ryodan has a tricky way of wording things that makes you say things you didn't mean to say. "Maybe I'll ask Barrons to teach me," I mutter and turn away from the stairs, heading for his office. I run smack into his chest. "Dude, move. Trying to get somewhere here."

"No one but me is ever going to teach you, Dani."

He touches me before I see it coming, has his hand under my chin, turning my face up. My shiver is instant and uncontrollable.

"That's non-negotiable. You signed a contract with me that grants exclusivity. You won't like it if you try to break it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

All science requires mathematics.
[Editors' summary of Bacon's idea, not Bacon's wording.] ~ Roger Bacon

Gospel songs to me are about the mansion in the sky, and washed in the blood of Christ's crimson blood, songs that are filled with biblical wording that's no longer understood by a lot of people. ~ Larry Norman

Reign is no doubt wording that is a little too grand for the contemporary mind, though what it refers to is what everyone actually pursues in life. We have been trained to think of "reigning" as exclusionary of others. But in the heart of the divine conspiracy, it just means to be free and powerful in the creation and governance of what is good. In the life of prayer we are training for, we reign in harmonious union with the infinite power of God. ~ Dallas Willard

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~ John Keats

A cold wind swept across the patio, causing me to shiver. Noah shrugged off his black leather jacket and tossed it around my shoulders. "How are you going to tutor me if you get fucking pneumonia?" I cocked an eyebrow. What an odd combination of romantic gesture and horribly crude wording. ~ Katie McGarry

Many people confuse the statement "almost all terrorists are Moslems" with "almost all Moslems are terrorists." Assume that the first statement is true, that 99 percent of terrorists are Moslems. This would mean that only about .001 percent of Moslems are terrorists, since there are more than one billion Moslems and only, say, ten thousand terrorists, one in a hundred thousand. So the logical mistake makes you (unconsciously) overestimate the odds of a randomly drawn individual Moslem person (between the age of, say, fifteen and fifty) being a terrorist by close to fifty thousand times!

[...]Our inferential machinery, that which we use in daily life, is not made for a complicated environment in which a statement changes markedly when its wording is slightly modified. Consider that in a primitive environment there is no consequential difference between the statements "most killers are wild animals" and "most wild animals are killers". There is an error here, but it is almost inconsequential. Our statistical intuitions have not evolved for a habitat in which these subtleties can make a big difference. ~ Nicholas Nassim Taleb

Of course, the truth is that the congresspersons are too busy raising campaign money to read the laws they pass. The laws are written by staff tax nerds who can put pretty much any wording they want in there. I bet that if you actually read the entire vastness of the US tax code, you'd find at least one sex scene. ("Yes, yes, YES!" moaned Vanessa as Lance, his taut body moist with moisture, again and again depreciated her adjusted gross rate of annualized fiscal debenture ... ) ~ Dave Barry

William's weekend with his friends, Geoffrey and Maggie, was turning out to be neither restful nor enjoyable. Things could have been worse, of course: there must be weekends during which the hosts' house burns to the ground, one of the guests murders another, the hostess is arrested in extradition proceedings or the guests are all poisoned by the inclusion of death's cap mushrooms in the stew. Such weekends must be very difficult indeed, not least because of the wording of the thank-you letters that one would have to write. The disaster, whatever it was, could hardly be ignored, but must be referred to tactfully in the letter, and always set in proper perspective. Thus, in the case of the mushroom poisoning, one would comment on how the other courses of the meal were delicious; in the case of the hostess's arrest, one would say something comforting about the ability of defence lawyers in the jurisdiction to which she was being extradited - and so on, mutatis mutandis, trying at all times to be as positive as possible. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Back in the 1920s, the major manual of the public relations industry actually was titled Propaganda (in those days, people were a little bit more honest). It opens saying something like this: the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is a central feature of a democratic system―the wording is virtually like that. Then it says: it is the job of the "intelligent minorities" to carry out this manipulation of the attitudes and opinions of the masses. And really that's the leading doctrine of modern liberal-democratic intellectual thought: that if you lose the power to control people by force, you need better indoctrination. ~ Noam Chomsky

Kale, jackass. His name is Kale, I snapped. Someone had joined the line behind Dad. The woman made an irritated noise of disapproval at my choice of wording and covered her small son's ears.
Great. Now I was corrupting children. ~ Jus Accardo

Muddy language is not confined to policies alone. Each of you has seen replies to simple questions in which the meaning was lost through hopelessly obscure wording. When a person writes to the Veterans Administration, he is entitled to an easily understood, frank, and courteous reply. If our replies cannot be understood, they are not only not worth writing, but they simply create additional work. ~ Omar N. Bradley

Notice how often he reframes the question (examines whether the question is the right question) before answering. In several cases, how he dissects wording is as interesting as his answers. ~ Timothy Ferriss

In the middle 1970s an astronomer I admire put together a modest manifesto called "Objections to Astrology" and asked me to endorse it. I struggled with his wording, and in the end found myself unable to sign, not because I thought astrology has any validity whatever, but because I felt (and still feel) that the tone of the statement was authoritarian. ~ Carl Sagan

Creative writing is your ability to develop your inner tension, your libido, your supply of energy and electric charge, turning the charge into an image or thought, and wording the thought, thus contributing all the activity of your mind to the immortal culture of humankind and subsequently to your own immortality. ~ Lara Biyuts

Actually, Bush, technically speaking, is not really President-because he refused to take the Oath of Office. I don't know how many of you noticed this, but the wording of the Oath of Office is written in the Constitution, so you can't fool around with it-and Bush refused to read it. The Oath of Of­fice says something about, "I promise to do this, that, and the other thing," and Bush added the words, "so help me God." Well, that's illegal: he's not President, if anybody cares. ~ Noam Chomsky

But what are you? Buddhist? Japanese? Communist? What?' 'I'm nothing.' 'Can you be nothing?' I never knew how to answer that question when I was asked it as a child, because the wording troubled me. Can you be nothing? I will be nothing. ~ Jaume Cabre

I'm not stupid, Mr. Potter. What's the real reason you didn't tell me, and what were you actually doing with Mr. Malfoy?"

"Ah. Well..." Harry broke eye contact with her, and looked down at the library table.

"Draco Malfoy told the Aurors under Veritaserum that he wanted to know if he could beat me, so he challenged me to a duel to test it empirically. Those were his exact words according to the transcript."

"Right," Harry said, still not meeting her eyes. "Hermione Granger. Of course she'll remember the exact wording. It doesn't matter if she's chained to her chair, on trial for murder in front of the entire Wizengamot -"

"What were you really doing with Draco Malfoy?"

Harry winced, and said, "Probably not quite what you're thinking, but..."

The horror scaled and scaled within her, and finally broke loose.

"You were doing SCIENCE with him? "

"Well -"

"You were doing SCIENCE with him? You were supposed to be doing science with ME! ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The Romans may be known for many things, but humor isn't one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a titulus so that everyone know the crime for which they were being punished and thus be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus's titulus was likely genuine is demonstrated by Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, who notes that "if [the titulus] were invented by Christians, they would have used Christos, for early Christians would scarcely have called their Lord 'King of the Jews'."[..] the notion that a no-name Jewish peasant would have received a personal audience with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who had probably signed a dozen execution orders that day alone, is so outlandish that it cannot be taken seriously. ~ Reza Aslan

When someone isn't smart enough to express their frustration, they use dirty words. Those are words that describe a lack of intelligence. Smart people don't use those kind of dirty words, because they find it an insult to their intelligence. ~ Nouman Ali Khan

It's very interesting, the joke comes first and then the wording comes within five seconds, maybe ten seconds. My thing is to get the joke across in as few words as possible. However, sometimes a word that's not really needed does help the rhythm of it. It's a gut feeling. ~ Steven Wright

On vague wording of drone strike criteria: Are you going to just drop a hellfire missile on Jane Fonda? Are you going to drop a missile on Kent State? That's gobbledygook. ~ Rand Paul

WARNING: UNHAPPY ENDING! she wrote. If more bookshop owners had taken the responsibility to hang warning signs, her life would have been much easier. Cigarette packets came with warnings, so why not tragic books? There was wording on bottles of beer warning against drinking and driving, but not a single word about the consequences of reading books without tissues to hand. ~ Katarina Bivald

My husband is smart enough to notice me trying to control him like I'm his boss or his mother - instead of his lover - no matter how clever my wording. ~ Laura Doyle

Recently I came across a Zen prayer that Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, recites prior to eating: "In this plate of food, I see the entire universe supporting my existence." I like Hanh's meditation a lot because the wording allows me to include God in my gratitude without excluding gratitude to all the unseen human beings who also had a hand in the gift of the food in front of me. ~ Jacqueline A. Bussie

There are two kinds of patriotism
monarchical patriotism and republican patriotism. In the one case the government and the king may rightfully furnish you their notions of patriotism; in the other, neither the government nor the entire nation is privileged to dictate to any individual what the form of his patriotism shall be. The gospel of the monarchical patriotism is: "The King can do no wrong." We have adopted it with all its servility, with an unimportant change in the wording: "Our country, right or wrong!" We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had:
the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism. ~ Mark Twain