I was reminded of this Hemingway quote last night as I had a moment of panic listening to other students in my class read their work out loud:
“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”
If Drunk Ernie tells me it’s ok to used simple language, I’m going to keep using simple language.
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Ah, lovely. My personal fave comes from some George Orwell guy:
“Never use a long word where a short one will do.”
Stick that in your pretentiously long word cigar and smoke it, poseurs. Ah, indeed.