The Penguin Guide to Plain English

perfect
I find it hard to imagine a more perfect view.
If the speaker could imagine a m ore perfect view, then the view in
question w ould not be perfect. What is perfect cannot be im proved
upon.
true
A statement is either true or false. If John is six feet tall, the statement
John is five feet eleven is not truer than the statement John is five feet
six. Both statements are false.
Would it not be truer to admit that we can never guess at the workings of
the divine mind?
This kind of rhetorical flourish, whatever it follows, is totally illogical.
Truer could be replaced by true, but the introduction o f the w ord is
unnecessary: Must we not admit that we can never guess at the workings
o f the divine m ind?
unique
If something is unique it is absolutely the only one o f its kind. Therefore
one cannot speak o f anything being m ore unique than other things,
nor o f something being very unique. The w ord unique is properly
applied to a thing o f w hich only one exists, yet the num ber of u n ique
opportunities now offered by the business w orld seems to be limitless.

W O R D S D A M A G E D BY
MISUSE A N D O V E R -U S E
As in so many departments o f life, fashion in language has a deleterious
effect on usage, cheapening terms by misuse and then by over-use in too
many different contexts. The most obvious kind o f misuse is that w hich
results from sheer error in understanding. One or two people make
mistakes and others follow suit. We have show n how the w ords substi
tute and substitution have been confused w ith the words replace and
replacement, and now they are so widely misused that one is likely to
be accused o f pedantry if one draws attention to the error.
In many cases over-use cheapens w ords w ithout damaging them to