Writers on writing

‘Do but take care to express yourself in a plain, easy Manner, in well-chosen, significant and decent Terms; study to explain your Thoughts, and set them in the truest Light, labouring as much as possible, not to leave them dark nor intricate, but clear and intelligible.’
Cervantes, Preface to Don Quixote

‘The final cause of speech is to get an idea as exactly as possible out of one mind and into another. Its formal cause, therefore, is such choice and disposition of words as will achieve this end most economically.’
GM Young

‘If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what ought to be done remains undone.’
Confucius

‘Writing, when properly managed (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.’
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759-67)

 ‘True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense.’
Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism, (1711)

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