On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

by William Zinsser

I would suggest a similar guideline for separating good English from technical English. It’s the difference between, say, “printout” and “input.” A printout is a specific object that a computer emits. Before the advent of computers it wasn’t needed; now it is. But it has stayed where it belongs. Not so with “input,” which was coined to describe the information that’s fed to a computer. Our input is sought on every subject, from diets to philosophical discourse (“I’d like your input on whether God really exists”). I don’t want to give somebody my input and get his feedback, though I’d be glad to offer my ideas and hear what he thinks of them. Good usage, to me, consists of using good words if they already exist—as they almost always do—to express myself clearly and simply to someone else. You might say it’s how I verbalize the interpersonal.