How To Craft The Perfect Sentence, Part 13

CWK

Say SOMEthing: Something real, solid, weighty.

It’s easy to say ‘nothing’ – to multiply idle, nondescript, meaningless words. As we write, words pile up, sentences accumulate; soon we have a heap of words, words, words.

Malcolm Muggeride describes the habits of a manufacturer of idle words, “It is painful to me now to reflect, the ease with which I got into the way of using this non-language; these drooling non-sentences conveying non-thoughts, propounding non-fears and offering non-hopes. Words are as beautiful as love, and as easily betrayed. I am more penitent for my false words – for the most part, mercifully lost forever in the Media’s great slag-heaps – than for false deeds (Muggeridge, Chronicles: The Green Stick, 171).”