100 Best First Lines from Novels

Following is a list of the 100 best first lines from novels, as decided by the American Book Review, a nonprofit journal published at the Unit for Contemporary Literature at Illinois State University:

1. Call me Ishmael. - Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851)

2. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. - Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)

3. A screaming comes across the sky. - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

4. Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. - Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967; trans. Gregory Rabassa)

5. Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. - Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955)

6. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. - Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; trans. Constance Garnett)

7. riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. - James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939)

8. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. - George Orwell, 1984 (1949)

9. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

10. I am an invisible man. - Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

11. The Miss Lonelyhearts of the New York Post-Dispatch (Are you in trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-you) sat at his desk and stared at a piece of white cardboard. - Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts (1933)

12. You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. —Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885)

13. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested. —Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Breon Mitchell)

14. You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. —Italo Calvino, If on a winter's night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver)

15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. —Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)

16. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth. - J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (1951)

17. Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. - James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

18. This is the saddest story I have ever heard. - Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier (1915)

19. I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly considered how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost:—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that, in which the reader is likely to see me. - Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (1759n1767)

20. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. - Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)

21. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. - James Joyce, Ulysses (1922)

22. It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. - Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, Paul Clifford (1830)

23. One summer afternoon Mrs. Oedipa Maas came home from a Tupperware party whose hostess had put perhaps too much kirsch in the fondue to find that she, Oedipa, had been named executor, or she supposed executrix, of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, a California real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time but still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary. - Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1966)

24. It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not. - Paul Auster, City of Glass (1985)

25. Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting. - William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929)

26. 124 was spiteful. - Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987)

27. Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing. - Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605; trans. Edith Grossman)

28. Mother died today. - Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Stuart Gilbert)

29. Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife, Shuyu. - Ha Jin, Waiting (1999)

30. The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. - William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)

31. I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground (1864; trans. Michael R. Katz)

32. Where now? Who now? When now? - Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (1953; trans. Patrick Bowles)

33. Once an angry man dragged his father along the ground through his own orchard. "Stop!" cried the groaning old man at last, "Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this tree." - Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans (1925)

34. In a sense, I am Jacob Horner. - John Barth, The End of the Road (1958)

35. It was like so, but wasn't. - Richard Powers, Galatea 2.2 (1995)

36. —Money . . . in a voice that rustled. - William Gaddis, J R (1975)

37. Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. - Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway (1925)

38. All this happened, more or less. - Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

39. They shoot the white girl first. - Toni Morrison, Paradise (1998)

40. For a long time, I went to bed early. - Marcel Proust, Swann's Way (1913; trans. Lydia Davis)

41. The moment one learns English, complications set in. - Felipe Alfau, Chromos (1990)

42. Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature. - Anita Brookner, The Debut (1981)

43. I was the shadow of the waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane; - Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire (1962)

44. Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. - Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

45. I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. - Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (1911)

46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex's admonition, against Allen's angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa's antipodal ant annexation. - Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)

47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. - C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)

48. He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. - Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea (1952)

49. It was the day my grandmother exploded. - Iain M. Banks, The Crow Road (1992)

50. I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. - Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex (2002)

51. Elmer Gantry was drunk. - Sinclair Lewis, Elmer Gantry (1927)

52. We started dying before the snow, and like the snow, we continued to fall. - Louise Erdrich, Tracks (1988)

53. It was a pleasure to burn. - Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

54. A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead. - Graham Greene, The End of the Affair (1951)

55. Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. - Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939)

56. I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call our selves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me. - Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)

57. In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street. - David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988)

58. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. - George Eliot, Middlemarch (1872)

59. It was love at first sight. - Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961)

60. What if this young woman, who writes such bad poems, in competition with her husband, whose poems are equally bad, should stretch her remarkably long and well-made legs out before you, so that her skirt slips up to the tops of her stockings? - Gilbert Sorrentino, Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things (1971)

61. I have never begun a novel with more misgiving. - W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge (1944)

62. Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person. - Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups (2001)

63. The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. - G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

64. In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)

65. You better not never tell nobody but God. - Alice Walker, The Color Purple (1982)

66. "To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die." - Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (1988)

67. It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. - Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (1963)

68. Most really pretty girls have pretty ugly feet, and so does Mindy Metalman, Lenore notices, all of a sudden. - David Foster Wallace, The Broom of the System (1987)

69. If I am out of my mind, it's all right with me, thought Moses Herzog. - Saul Bellow, Herzog (1964)

70. Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Saviour at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. - Flannery O'Connor, The Violent Bear it Away (1960)

71. Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital; my keeper is watching me, he never lets me out of his sight; there's a peephole in the door, and my keeper's eye is the shade of brown that can never see through a blue-eyed type like me. - GŸnter Grass, The Tin Drum (1959; trans. Ralph Manheim)

72. When Dick Gibson was a little boy he was not Dick Gibson. - Stanley Elkin, The Dick Gibson Show (1971)

73. Hiram Clegg, together with his wife Emma and four friends of the faith from Randolph Junction, were summoned by the Spirit and Mrs. Clara Collins, widow of the beloved Nazarene preacher Ely Collins, to West Condon on the weekend of the eighteenth and nineteenth of April, there to await the End of the World. - Robert Coover, The Origin of the Brunists (1966)

74. She waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there were moments at which she showed herself, in the glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with the irritation that had brought her to the point of going away without sight of him. - Henry James, The Wings of the Dove (1902)

75. In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

76. "Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass. - Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)

77. He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull. - Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. - L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)

79. On my naming day when I come 12 I gone front spear and kilt a wyld boar he parbly ben the las wyld pig on the Bundel Downs any how there hadnt ben none for a long time befor him nor I aint looking to see none agen. - Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (1980)

80. Justice? - You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law. - William Gaddis, A Frolic of His Own (1994)

81. Vaughan died yesterday in his last car-crash. - J. G. Ballard, Crash (1973)

82. I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. - Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle (1948)

83. "When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing." - Katherine Dunn, Geek Love (1983)

84. In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. - John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

85. When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon. - James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss (1978)

86. It was just noon that Sunday morning when the sheriff reached the jail with Lucas Beauchamp though the whole town (the whole county too for that matter) had known since the night before that Lucas had killed a white man. - William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust (1948)

87. I, Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus This-that-and-the-other (for I shall not trouble you yet with all my titles) who was once, and not so long ago either, known to my friends and relatives and associates as "Claudius the Idiot," or "That Claudius," or "Claudius the Stammerer," or "Clau-Clau-Claudius" or at best as "Poor Uncle Claudius," am now about to write this strange history of my life; starting from my earliest childhood and continuing year by year until I reach the fateful point of change where, some eight years ago, at the age of fifty-one, I suddenly found myself caught in what I may call the "golden predicament" from which I have never since become disentangled. - Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)

88. Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women. - Charles Johnson, Middle Passage (1990)

89. I am an American, Chicago born - Chicago, that somber city —and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. - Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953)

90. The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. - Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (1922)

91. I will tell you in a few words who I am: lover of the hummingbird that darts to the flower beyond the rotted sill where my feet are propped; lover of bright needlepoint and the bright stitching fingers of humorless old ladies bent to their sweet and infamous designs; lover of parasols made from the same puffy stuff as a young girl's underdrawers; still lover of that small naval boat which somehow survived the distressing years of my life between her decks or in her pilothouse; and also lover of poor dear black Sonny, my mess boy, fellow victim and confidant, and of my wife and child. But most of all, lover of my harmless and sanguine self. - John Hawkes, Second Skin (1964)

92. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. - Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche (1921)

93. Psychics can see the color of time it's blue. - Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away (1986)

94. In the town, there were two mutes and they were always together. - Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

95. Once upon a time two or three weeks ago, a rather stubborn and determined middle-aged man decided to record for posterity, exactly as it happened, word by word and step by step, the story of another man for indeed what is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal, a somewhat paranoiac fellow unmarried, unattached, and quite irresponsible, who had decided to lock himself in a room a furnished room with a private bath, cooking facilities, a bed, a table, and at least one chair, in New York City, for a year 365 days to be precise, to write the story of another person—a shy young man about of 19 years old—who, after the war the Second World War, had come to America the land of opportunities from France under the sponsorship of his uncle—a journalist, fluent in five languages—who himself had come to America from Europe Poland it seems, though this was not clearly established sometime during the war after a series of rather gruesome adventures, and who, at the end of the war, wrote to the father his cousin by marriage of the young man whom he considered as a nephew, curious to know if he the father and his family had survived the German occupation, and indeed was deeply saddened to learn, in a letter from the young man—a long and touching letter written in English, not by the young man, however, who did not know a damn word of English, but by a good friend of his who had studied English in school—that his parents both his father and mother and his two sisters one older and the other younger than he had been deported they were Jewish to a German concentration camp Auschwitz probably and never returned, no doubt having been exterminated deliberately X * X * X * X, and that, therefore, the young man who was now an orphan, a displaced person, who, during the war, had managed to escape deportation by working very hard on a farm in Southern France, would be happy and grateful to be given the opportunity to come to America that great country he had heard so much about and yet knew so little about to start a new life, possibly go to school, learn a trade, and become a good, loyal citizen. - Raymond Federman, Double or Nothing (1971)

96. Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. - Margaret Atwood, Cat's Eye (1988)

97. He - for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it - was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. - Virginia Woolf, Orlando (1928)

98. High, high above the North Pole, on the first day of 1969, two professors of English Literature approached each other at a combined velocity of 1200 miles per hour. - David Lodge, Changing Places (1975)

99. They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did. - Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea (1966)

100. The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. - Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

A Word about Words

Don’t let these commonly misused/misspelled words and phrases trip you up
By Mark Terence Chapman

Here are some more words and phrases that are commonly misused or misspelled. A conscientious writer should use these correctly. More importantly, using these words/phrases correctly will reduce the odds of your writing being rejected by an editor due to excessive errors. (Editors don’t want to waste time on pieces that require an inordinate amount of their time to clean up.) Even if you write only business reports and emails, you still wouldn’t want people chuckling over your misuse of the English language, would you?

Just as importantly, using the correct word can better convey the nuance you desire. As Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Pour(ed) vs. Pore(d)

Wrong: He poured over the manual for hours.
Right: He pored over the manual for hours.

To pour over is to spill a liquid or loose particles onto something. To pore over is to read or study intently or with a steady gaze, or to meditate over something.

Fort vs. Forte

Wrong: Singing is not my fort.
Right: Singing is not my forte.

A forte (FOR-tay) is someone’s strong point, something at which he or she excels. It is often mispronounced fort, which leads to the misspelling.

Gape(ed) vs. Gap(ped)

Wrong: His jacket gaped open.
Right: His jacket gapped open.

To gape is to open wide, as with an open mouth. In this context, to gap is to come open or to show a gap.

On route vs. En route

Wrong: Don’t worry. The ambulance is on route.
Right: Don’t worry. The ambulance is en route.

The French phrase en route (pronounced ahn-ROOT) means on the way or along the way. Because of the French pronunciation, it is often misspelled as on route. (The Anglicized pronunciation en-ROOT is also correct.)

Solicit vs. Elicit

Wrong: I’ve tried to solicit a reply, to no avail.
Right: I’ve tried to elicit a reply, to no avail.

To elicit is to draw out, bring forth, evoke, or provoke a response. To solicit is to entreat, invite, request, or petition, as well as to offer sex for money.

Effective vs. Efficient

Right: We acquired the merchandise in an effective manner.
Right: We acquired the merchandise in an efficient manner.
Right: We acquired the merchandise effectively and efficiently.

Each of the above examples could be correct, depending on the nuance you are trying to convey. Effective means adequate to the task of accomplishing one’s goal—making a sale, or winning a battle, for example. On the other hand, efficient means performing or functioning in the best possible manner and with the least amount of waste.

Whereas an army might be effective at winning a battle, it might do so at the cost of thousands of troops. Another army might be equally effective, but more efficient at winning the same battle, by sending a small strike force behind enemy lines to capture the opposing general, with few—if any—losses.

Appraise vs. Apprise(d)

Wrong: Keep me appraised.
Right: Keep me apprised.

Appraise means to assess the value of an asset or to estimate the quality or importance of something. Apprise means to inform, advise, or give notice to.

Past vs. Passed

Wrong: The passed is the passed.
Right: The past is the past.

Past means earlier. It’s used to describe the passage of time. Passed is the past-tense of pass, which has a number of meanings, including to go by (pass a truck on the highway), skip or ignore (pass through the town without stopping), endure (thus passed a thoroughly unpleasant hour), complete successfully (pass a test), transfer or transmit (pass it on, pass the ball), etc.

Premium vs. Premiere

Wrong: This is our Premium offering.
Right: This is our Premiere offering.

Premium, in this context, means of exceptional quality or greater value than others of its sort. But it can also mean greater cost. (“Quality comes at a premium.”) That’s probably not the message the advertiser wished to convey in the first example. Therefore, the second one is probably better. Premiere means initial, principal, or leading. So, in the above, example, it means top-of-the-line or best.

Metaphor vs. Analogy vs. Simile

Right: The play was a metaphor for life.
Right: The internal combustion engine is a good analogy for how the human heart works.
Right: An apt simile is this: His home-made helicopter flew like a lead balloon.

A metaphor is something that represents or symbolizes something else figuratively. An analogy compares the similarities of two things. A simile, on the other hand, compares the dissimilarities of two things. The comparison usually is introduced with words such as like or as. These three terms are confused so often—especially metaphor and analogy—that it’s important to understand their differences and how they should be used.

If you’ve ever been confused about any of these words or phrases, tack this column to the wall by your desk. It’ll help you avoid similar errors in the future.

Mark Terence Chapman writes in various genres: He’s a poet, short story writer, novelist, humorist, and even a nonfiction writer tackling computer topics and nanotechnology. To find out more about Mr. Chapman, please visit his Web site at: http://tesserene.com Click here or his blog at: http://tesserene.blogspot.com.Click here

William Safire's Legacy

Safire not only had quick, sharp wit but an amazing way of putting words together. Two of his gems: "nattering nabobs of negativism" and "hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history." LOL! Love those.

William Safire: Political Langauge

William Safire Dies at 79

William Safire, speechwriter, NY columnist, dies
By DEEPTI HAJELA
The Associated Press

NEW YORK — William Safire, the conservative columnist and word warrior who feared no politician or corner of the English language, died Sunday at age 79.

The Pulitzer Prize winner died at a hospice in Rockville, Md. His assistant Rosemary Shields said he had been diagnosed with cancer, but she declined to say when he was diagnosed or what type of cancer he had.

Safire spent more than 30 years writing on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times. In his "On Language" column in The New York Times Magazine and more than a dozen books, Safire traced the origins of words and everyday phrases such as "straw man," "under the bus" and "the proof is in the pudding."

New York Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a statement: "For decades, Bill's columns on The Times's Op-Ed Page and in our Sunday Magazine delighted our readers with his insightful political commentary, his thoughtful analysis of our national discourse and, of course, his wonderful sermons on the use and abuse of language. Bill will be greatly missed."

Michael Oreskes, senior managing editor of The Associated Press, who served as a correspondent and Washington bureau chief of the Times during Safire's years as a columnist, said the conservative writer was a mentor and friend to a generation of Washington journalists of all political persuasions.

"He believed in the values of journalism — of ferreting out the truth and holding leaders to account, Republicans and Democrats," Oreskes said. "Above all, he loved to encourage his colleagues to break a good story and raise hell."

Safire penned more than 3,000 columns, aggressively defending civil liberties and Israel while tangling with political figures. Bill Clinton famously wanted to punch the curmudgeonly columnist in the nose after Safire called his wife "a congenital liar."

Shields said: "Not only was he brilliant in language and assessing the nuances of politics, he was a kind and funny boss who gave lots of credit to others."

As a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, Safire penned Vice President Spiro Agnew's famous phrase, "nattering nabobs of negativism," a tongue-in-cheek alliteration that Safire claimed was directed not at the press but at Vietnam defeatists.

Safire also wrote several novels and served as chairman of the Dana Foundation, a philanthropy that supports brain science, immunology and arts education.

Along with George Will and William F. Buckley Jr., Safire's smooth prose helped make conservatism respectable in the 1970s, paving the way for the Reagan Revolution.

Safire was a pioneer of opinionated reporting. His columns were often filled with sources from Washington and the Middle East, making them must-reads for Beltway insiders.

Author Eric Alterman, in his 1999 book "Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy," called Safire an institution unto himself.

"Few insiders doubt that William Safire is the most influential and respected pundit alive," Alterman wrote.

Safire's scathing columns on the Carter White House budget director Bert Lance's financial affairs won him the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1978; in 1995 Safire was named to the Pulitzer board.

Critics said Safire made loose accusations trumpeting various "scandals" by the Clintons that were never borne out by the facts.

"Like a pioneering blogger, Safire years ago started grabbing bits of information and wrapping them in the tightest partisan, what-if spin possible," Eric Boehlert wrote in the Web site Salon in 2004. "When the accusation unraveled, he'd simply ignore the thud of his charges hitting the floor."

From 2001 to 2003, Safire also published several columns pressing the case that Saddam Hussein was linked to the Sept. 11 attacks, calling it an "undisputed fact" that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in Prague in April 2001. The 9/11 commission said that meeting never happened.

Safire's pun-filled "On Language" column exploring the foibles and abuses of the English language was far less controversial, winning him more admirers across the political spectrum.

Safire lived in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md., with his wife, Helene, a British-born jewelry designer; they had a son and a daughter.

Safire, born Dec. 17, 1929, to a Jewish family in New York City, was the youngest of three boys. He attended Syracuse University but dropped out after two years to work as a legman for a Republican political strategist and publicist Tex McCrary, who had a column in the New York Herald Tribune.

Safire started writing speeches for Nixon in 1965 and followed him to the White House. He left shortly before the Watergate break-in erupted into a full-fledged scandal.

Associated Press writer Derek Rose contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

A Word about Words

A Word about Words
Don’t let these commonly misused/misspelled words and phrases trip you up
By Mark Terence Chapman

Here are some more words and phrases that are commonly misused or misspelled. A conscientious writer should use these correctly. More importantly, using these words/phrases correctly will reduce the odds of your writing being rejected by an editor due to excessive errors. (Editors don’t want to waste time on pieces that require an inordinate amount of their time to clean up.) Even if you write only business reports and emails, you still wouldn’t want people chuckling over your misuse of the English language, would you?

Error vs. Err
Wrong: Let’s make sure we error on the side of caution.
Right: Let’s make sure we err on the side of caution.

I’ve heard this one too many times. To err (verb) is to make a mistake (or stray morally, as in “to err is human…”), while an error (noun) is the mistake. One is the act, the other the result.

Bisect vs. Dissect
Right: The interstate bisects the railroad tracks at mile marker 93.
Right: She refused to dissect the frog in today’s lab.

To bisect is to cut into two approximately equal parts, or to intersect or cross (as in the case of two roads), or even to fork. (“The old church is right past where highway 47 bisects.”) To dissect is to cut apart or examine in minute detail (such as dissecting an animal or an idea).

Egress vs. Ingress
Wrong: Egress is through that entrance.
Right: Ingress is through that entrance.

Egress is an exit, or the act of exiting. Ingress refers to going in or entering through a point of ingress (an entryway).

Congradulations vs. Congratulations
Wrong: Congradulations on your promotion!
Right: Congratulations on your promotion!

Congradulations is simply a misspelling of congratulations, an expression of pleasure or joy in the good fortune of another.

Simplistic vs. Simple
Wrong: There’s a simplistic solution to that problem.
Right: There’s a simple solution to that problem.

Simple means easy, while simplistic refers to something made overly simple (oversimplified), as in “You have a simplistic view of the world.” Simple is usually good; simplistic is not.

Flush out vs. Flesh out
Wrong: Write up an outline. We can flush it out later.
Right: Write up an outline. We can flesh it out later.

To flesh out an idea is to add meat to the bones, to give it substance or character. To flush out is to clean with a flow of liquid, as in flushing a toilet or fuel line. That’s probably not quite what the speaker has in mind when referring to flushing out an idea. (It can also mean to force a person or animal from hiding.)

Prospective vs. Perspective
Wrong: Have you met Mary’s perspective husband yet?
Right: Have you met Mary’s prospective husband yet?

Perspective, a noun, refers to a viewpoint or a way of looking at an idea (putting it in perspective), or a technique for displaying spatial relationships in two dimensions (artistic perspective), among other meanings. Prospective, an adjective, means future, likely, or expected. So, the perspective may be off in a blueprint of a prospective skyscraper.

Proscribe/Proscription vs. Prescribe/Prescription
Wrong: My doctor proscribed a sleep aid.
Right: My doctor prescribed a sleep aid.

Doctors prescribe, or order the use of, prescription medicines. To proscribe something is to prohibit, condemn, or outlaw—the exact opposite of prescribing.

Cache vs. Cash vs. Cachet
Wrong: Let’s cash some supplies in the basement in case of emergency.
Right: Let’s cache some supplies in the basement in case of emergency.

A cache (pronounced CASH) is a hiding place for food, ammunition, treasure, and so on; it can also mean the things hidden in the cache, as in “a cache of food.” Cash, of course, is money, including both coins and the folding variety. It can also refer to cash equivalents, such as checks and money orders. Cachet (pronounced ka-SHEY) has several meanings, including an official mark, seal, or stamp (as in a mark of excellence), as well as prestige. (“The title holds a certain cachet.”)

Acute vs. Chronic
Right: She’s suffering from an acute illness.
Right: She’s suffering from a chronic illness.

Acute means sharp, severe, or serious, such as an acute water shortage. Something that’s chronic continues for a long time or recurs frequently. An acute illness is brief and severe, while a chronic one is of long duration. Medically speaking, the two words have opposite meanings, so be sure to use them correctly.

If you’ve ever been confused about any of these words or phrases, tack this column to the wall by your desk. It’ll help you avoid similar errors in the future.

Newsletter contributing columnist Mark Terence Chapman writes in various genres: He’s a poet, short story writer, novelist, humorist, and even a nonfiction writer tackling computer topics and nanotechnology. To find out more about Mr. Chapman, please visit his Web site at: http://tesserene.com Click here or his blog at: http://tesserene.blogspot.com.
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A Word about Words

A Word about Words
By Mark Terence Chapman

Here are some more words and phrases that are commonly misused or misspelled. A conscientious writer should use these correctly. More importantly, using these words/phrases correctly will reduce the odds of your writing being rejected by an editor due to excessive errors. (Editors don’t want to waste time on pieces that require an inordinate amount of their time to clean up.) Even if you write only business reports and emails, you still wouldn’t want people chuckling over your misuse of the English language, would you?

Envelop vs. Envelope

Wrong: Stick it in an envelop and mail it.
Right: Stick it in an envelope and mail it.

An envelope (pronounced EN-vel-ope or ON-vel-ope) is a flat container, usually made of paper, in which to put letters or other papers. Envelop (en-VEL-up) is a verb that means to enclose, surround, or wrap up. Therefore, you might envelop a letter with an envelope.

Contingent vs. Contingency

Wrong: We have a backup plan as a contingent.
Right: We have a backup plan as a contingency.

As an adjective, contingent means dependent on (as in contingent upon the weather) or uncertain (contingent plans). The noun contingency refers to a chance event or uncertainty. (He was prepared for any contingency.)

Emigrate(ion) vs. Immigrate(ion), Emigrant vs. Immigrant

Wrong: She has plans to immigrate to Canada.
Right: She has plans to emigrate to Canada.
Wrong: He’s a recent emigrant to our country.
Right: He’s a recent immigrant to our country.

An immigrant is someone who immigrates, or moves here from another country. Conversely, an emigrant is someone who emigrates to another country. To keep them straight, think of the “e” in emigrate as standing for “exit.”

Grandiose vs. Grand

Wrong: This grandiose building will stand as a symbol of hope for decades.
Right: This grand building will stand as a symbol of hope for decades.

Something that’s grand is imposing, majestic, impressive, or magnificent. Grandiose means pompous, overblown, or affectedly grand—definitely not a compliment.

Imminent vs. Eminent vs. Preminent

Wrong: They were prepared for his eminent demise.
Right: They were prepared for his imminent demise.
Wrong: He’s a preeminent authority on the subject.
Right: He’s an eminent authority on the subject.
Right: He’s the preeminent authority on the subject.

Imminent means impending. Eminent means prominent, distinguished, or notable, as in a noted authority, while preeminent means at the forefront or above all others. Therefore, there can be many eminent authorities, but only one preeminent one.

Flout vs. Flaunt

Wrong: He seems to go out of his way to flaunt authority.
Right: He seems to go out of his way to flout authority.

To flaunt is to show off conspicuously or ostentatiously, as in flaunting a new sports car or jewelry. On the other hand, to flout is to treat with scorn, disdain, or contempt.

Pair vs. Pairs

Wrong: She bought four pair of shoes at Macy’s.
Right: She bought four pairs of shoes at Macy’s.

Pair means two. For more than one pair, use pairs—the plural form of the word.

Automatic vs. Automated

Wrong: The process is entirely automatic.
Right: The process is entirely automated.

Automatic means able to start or operate independently or without thought. Automated means to apply the principles of automation by having a machine perform a task.

Horde(ing) vs. Hoard(ing)

Wrong: She’d been hording food for years, in case of disaster.
Right: She’d been hoarding food for years, in case of disaster.

To hoard, a verb, is to stockpile for future use or preservation. Horde is a noun that refers to a large group of people or animals, as in a mob or herd.

Historic vs. Historical

Wrong: This is an historical day!
Right: This is a historic day!

Historic means noteworthy. A historic day is one that will be long remembered. Historical merely means relating to history (as in historical records)—something that happened once upon a time. (Note: “An” should only precede words that begin with vowels. Therefore “an historic” is incorrect, even though it frequently appears this way, as if the “h” were silent.)

If you’ve ever been confused about any of these words or phrases, tack this column to the wall by your desk. It’ll help you avoid similar errors in the future.

Mark Terence Chapman writes in various genres: He’s a poet, short story writer, novelist, humorist, and even a nonfiction writer tackling computer topics and nanotechnology. To find out more about Mr. Chapman, please visit his Web site at: http://tesserene.com or his blog at: http://tesserene.blogspot.com.

Click here

A Word about Words

Don’t let these commonly misused/misspelled words and phrases trip you up
By Mark Terence Chapman

Here are some more words and phrases that are commonly misused or misspelled. A conscientious writer should use these correctly. More importantly, using these words/phrases correctly will reduce the odds of your writing being rejected by an editor due to excessive errors. (Editors don’t want to waste time on pieces that require an inordinate amount of their time to clean up.) Even if you write only business reports and emails, you still wouldn’t want people chuckling over your misuse of the English language, would you?

Bookoo or Boocoo vs. Beaucoup

Wrong: We’re gonna get in boocoo trouble!
Right: We’re gonna get in beaucoup trouble!

Beaucoup is French for many, much, large, or significant (as in merci beaucoup: many thanks). Although the correct French pronunciation is bo-KOO, in English it’s often pronounced BOO-koo, leading to the incorrect phonetic spellings.

Intrical vs. Integral

Wrong: He’s an intrical part of this operation
Right: He’s an integral part of this operation.

Integral means consisting or composed of parts of a whole, or essential to the completeness of the whole. It can even refer the whole itself. Intrical is simply a misspelling and mispronunciation, and not an integral part of the English language.

Per say vs. Per se

Wrong: I don’t have an answer per say, but I do know how to find out.
Right: I don’t have an answer per se, but I do know how to find out.

Per se is Latin for “by itself,” and means “intrinsically,” “in and of itself,” or “with respect to its inherent nature.” Per say is simply a phonetic misspelling.

Clean up vs. Cleanup

Wrong: We need a clean up on aisle three.
Right: We need a cleanup on aisle three.

Cleanup is a noun that refers to the act of cleaning up. On the other hand, clean up is a verb phrase that means to wash or tidy up, purge of undesirables, finish, or make a large profit. So, you can straighten up a room, bat cleanup, or make a killing in the stock market.

Or either vs. Or else

Wrong: We can eat now, or either we can eat after the show.
Right: We can either eat now, or (else) we can eat after the show.

Or either is often heard in the southern U.S., but it’s exactly backwards. The choice is to either do this or do that. (Either we eat now, or we eat later.)

Astalavista vs. Hasta la vista

Wrong: Astalavista, baby!
Right: Hasta la vista, baby!

Hasta la vista (the h is silent) is Spanish for “until the seeing,” translated as “until we see each other again”—essentially, “See ya later.”

Shutdown vs. Shut down

Wrong: Always shutdown your computer during a lighting storm.
Right: Always shut down your computer during a lighting storm.

A shutdown (noun) refers to the cessation of an activity, such as shutting down a business, or a computer. The verb phrase to shut down means to close, stop, or hinder.

Smorgasborg vs. Smorgasbord

Wrong: I hear the new calling plan is a veritable smorgasborg of features.
Right: I hear the new calling plan is a veritable smorgasbord of features.

Unless your calling plan comes from the Star Trek universe, it’s a smorgasbord, which is an extensive variety or array, named for the Swedish word for a buffet of various hot and cold foods.

All be it vs. Albeit

Wrong: I’m here, all be it two hours late.
Right: I’m here, albeit two hours late.

Albeit is a conjunction that means “although” or “even if.” (It’s a 14th century contraction of “although be it.”) All be it is simply a phonetic misspelling.
If you’ve ever been confused about any of these words or phrases, tack this column to the wall by your desk. It’ll help you avoid similar errors in the future.

Mark Terence Chapman writes in various genres: He’s a poet, short story writer, novelist, humorist, and even a nonfiction writer tackling computer topics and nanotechnology. To find out more about Mr. Chapman, please visit his Web site at: http://tesserene.com or his blog at: http://tesserene.blogspot.com.

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