A Quote by Charles Lamb
A laxity pervades the popular use of words.
Related Quotes
Popular music of the last 50 years has failed to keep in step with advances in musical theater, namely Stephen Sondheim. But the two have grown apart so that popular music is based more than ever on a rhythmic grid that is irrelevant in musical theater. In popular music, words matter less and less. Especially now that it's so international, the fewer words the better. While theater music becomes more and more confined to a few blocks in midtown.
Make your copy straightforward to read, understand and use. Use easy words; those that are used for everyday speech. Use phrases that are not too imprecise and very understandable. Do not be too stuffy; remove pompous words and substitute them with plain words. Minimize complicated gimmicks and constructions. If you can't give the data directly and briefly, you must consider writing the copy again.
Sometimes I use words to throw you from once scene to the other, and sometimes I use words to pull you from one scene to the other. You might not be aware of it, but I may have overlapping words one way or the other. So, I'm actually using words.
We must use words to uplift and include. We can use our words to fight back against oppression and hate. But we must also channel our words into action.
Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.
I do not use words like 'liberal' or 'conservative.' You can ask me a question, and I will give you an answer. Those are words rich people on television use to divide and conquer.
But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.
Obama's ability to use his personality to push folks, whether on Capitol Hill or in Europe, means that he has to stay popular. What happens if he loses that popular mandate?
The words we use have weight. Whether it's in a conversation with a friend or something said publicly on stage or broadcast. And as performers, we know that because that's why we choose the words we use - that's the whole point of comedy.
There are three types of words: words we all know, words we should know, and words nobody knows. Don't use the third category.
To be honest, I struggle with words. I often forget them, you know, the official ones. Instead, I make words up. I use home-made words that sound similar to the real thing. Usually, they're some sort of confused hybrid of two existing words.
If something comes along that you don't like, there are a few sort of four-letter words that you can use to push it out of the sphere of discussion. If you were in a bar downtown, they might have different words, but if you're an educated person what you use are complicated words like "conspiracy theory" or "Marxist." It's a way of pushing unpleasant questions off the agenda so that we can continue in our own happy ideology.
The meanings of words and the uses of words come from practice from the way people in a given culture use those words.
Correctitude implies nowadays a formal or fastidious use of words; and what is wanted is not so much the correct as the living use of words. It is the memory of the meaning of a word which is the life of the word.
It is within the police power of the state to prohibit public use of fighting words that create a danger of breach of the peace, but simply to prohibit public use of fighting words is too broad. Those words may sometimes be used in situations where there is no danger.
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.
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