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The letter writer who spends his individuality in faddish paper, colored ink, and enigmatic paging, who 'crosses' his manuscript or insists upon paper so thin that it is hard to know which side one is reading, will need large revenues of talent to keep him from living behind his means in his claims on his reader's attention.

— Mary Augusta Jordan Correct Writing and Speaking (1906)

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More quotes by Mary Augusta Jordan

Going to college was a thing quite by itself, an experience to be reckoned with--something like Platonic love, or getting religion.

Spacious Days at Vassar (1916)

The stupid and the children of genius alike emancipate themselves from conventions.

Correct Writing and Speaking (1906)

Letters of friendship, of love, of hate, of business, of state, have come into new value within the last twenty-five years. Reading them has come to be one of the most alluring pleasures of a large class of persons.

Correct Writing and Speaking (1906)

There are so many ways that persons of intelligence have of expressing themselves. Some of these ways have little in common, many of them are contradictory in method, most of them differ in the effect aimed at, or the impression made.

Correct Writing and Speaking (1906)

There certainly is at present, then, no standard English, either in writing or in speaking, that is easily and cheaply available. There is no one correct way of writing or of speaking English. Within certain limits there are many ways of attaining correctness.

Correct Writing and Speaking (1906)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Mary Augusta Jordan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.