Top Highlights

• Here, in short, is what I want to tell you. Know what each sentence says, What it doesn’t say, And what it implies. Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.
• Knowing what you’re trying to say is always important. But knowing what you’ve actually said is crucial. It’s easier to tell what you’re saying in a short sentence.
• This is a book of first steps. Their meaning will change as your experience changes. This book contains the bones of many arguments and observations—a vertebra here, a mandible there—but the whole skeleton is what you make of it.
• You’ll find as much about thought and perception here as you will about language. There are no rules, only experiments.
• The premise of this book is that most of the received wisdom about how writing works is not only wrong but harmful. This is not an assumption. It’s a conclusion.