Free for the taking
Published: February 3, 2003
Whatever our upbringing or education and however we began to write, with patience and practice we can refine our methods and the materials we work with, enrich our vocabularies, our sense of the language, as our ear grows sharper. The words are all in the dictionary, and free for the taking; we can always add new ones or discard old ones at no cost whatever. This claim can be made for no other trade I know of.
—From an article by Allen Marple
The Writer, March 1963 |