I’ve always had a soft spot for William Safire. Of course, I’m too young to hold against him his swordsmanship as Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, especially since the phrases that survived that period—“nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history”—seem more laughable than irksome. (Any wordsmith knows that alliteration should never be carried that far.) Even his nastier jabs—calling Hillary Clinton “a congenital liar”—lost their sting in the repartee that followed (a Clinton aide said that the chief of state, “if he were not president,” would have busted Safire’s nose; Safire parried by praising the use of the subjunctive.)

He may have co-opted the Hindu word for “priest” to describe his political commentary, but it was as a language pundit that I came to follow Safire. I first read his syndicated column in the San Francisco Chronicle when I was a young writer. I can’t tell you how many pieces I clipped and copied, forcing them on high-school students and wannabe writers. He was witty on who and whom, tart on tautologies; from Safire I learned that syntax could be sexy, that writing about language could charm.

My true fondness for Safire, though, came in the mid-90s, when I was copy chief at Wired magazine. In a twist on the Oedipal process Harold Bloom describes (in which young writers slay their literary fathers), I made the keyboard my epée, tsk-tsking him for not knowing that zines (from the science-fiction fanzines, which had morphed into webzines and e-zines) were not spelled “zeens.”

That led to my most thrilling Safire moment, in 1996, when Safire recommended my book Wired Style as a Christmas “Gifts for Gab.” I read that particular New York Times magazine column while sitting in a white nightie in my sunny bay window in California. I jumped up, put on a recording of batá drums, and danced to a chant honoring the Afro-Cuban deity Obatala, god of creativity and justice. Not the usual response, surely, to Safire’s “On Language,” but it conveys the power of the moment.

In Safire’s generation (and earlier) the language gods were white, Eastern men—H.W. Fowler, William Strunk, E. B. White, James Kilpatrick, John Simon. There was something subversive about—if not exactly earning a seat at the table—at least having my book in the column.

Friends teasingly dubbed me The Cyber Safire, and the jousting continued. I unchivalrously chided him for insisting that into was the right preposition to follow jacked. No, no, I argued—in is a particle when it follows jack, or log, or for that matter tune, and it needs to retain its terse identity. Safire, or rather his assistants, started calling when questions surfaced about tech terms—coordinates instead of “phone numbers,” blog as a verb. I never talked to the man himself, but every now and then a surprise would arrive by mail: the latest Safire tome, thoughtfully inscribed.

I’m sad that he’s gone. And grateful for his exhilarating example.

If you think I’m obsessed with point of view, you’re right! I am auditing a Harvard class taught by James Wood (also a critic for The New Yorker), who has been discussing point of view in novels by Saul Bellow and Vladimir Nabokov. And in the first lecture of the class, Postwar American and British Fiction, Woods suggested that we might “want to pick up some Flaubert” and look specifically at point of view. OK, so I devoured all 275 pages of Madame Bovary.

Flaubert pioneered—or at least put on the map—the “free indirect style,” in which an omniscient narrator suddenly evaporates, entering into a character’s consciousness and representing his or her thoughts. (Check out the market scene with Emma and her lover-to-be.)

Of course, in nonfiction, free indirect style works less well. I call a writer who engages in such shape-shifting a “Wobbly Narrator.” Most writers who jump around from “he” to “you” to “I” are novices who haven’t mastered point of view, or who are afraid to pick a stance toward the material—whether the first-person singular of memoir, the second-person singular of colloquial writers reaching out to readers, or the third-person singular of the reporter concerned with credibly and precisely observing others.

Lemme find some examples of The Wobbly Narrator. I’ll post them in comments—and invite you to do the same.

“One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes,” the French mime Etienne Decroux used to remind his students. His dictum works equally well for students of writing. Each word we choose is—or should be—a pearl.

Whether you’re a floodgates-open writer or a blocked writer, remember: the first draft is for just getting the ideas down. It’s in the revising that we sift through our words, letting only the most perfect specimens adorn the thread of syntax. These “seven secrets of sinfully good prose” will help you banish the potatoes and burnish the pearls.

Secret #1: Use specific, concrete nouns and adjectives.
Well-chosen nouns and adjectives are critical in setting scenes, establishing character, and giving readers strong visual images. The best nouns are not just concrete (naming something that can be seen, touched, heard, tasted, or felt), but also highly specific. Search for the most evocative and exact. Why choose “house” when the options include cottage, Victorian, duplex, dacha, shack, bungalow, and bachelor’s pad? (Please, stay away from abstractions like abode, dwelling, domicile, or residence.)

Watch for clusters of abstract nouns. When a school principal wrote to parents urging a “communication facilitation skills development intervention” he should have tried harder to be clear: “We all need to help students write better.” Cross out groups of polysyllabic, abstract nouns and start over with one or two simple, clear words.

Strong nouns help you cut adjectives. Novice writers make the mistake of gooing up their descriptions with a lot of lush adjectives. Resist. Make every adjective count. Why use “yellow” given the options: bamboo, butter, jonquil , lemon, mimosa, saffron, and sauterne? The writer Diane Ackerman, in an article on golden lion tamarins, described the yellowish monkey as a “sunset-and-corn-silk-colored creature” with “sweet-potato-colored” legs, a “reddish” beard, and a chest and belly “the tawny gold of an autumn cornfield.” Now that’s exact!

Adjectives can do double-duty, painting both physical and psychological detail. In a profile about a North Carolina revenue agent, Alec Wilkinson wrote that Garland Bunting has “eyes that are clear and close-set and steel blue.” Those three adjectives convey Bunting’s glare and capture his gritty personality.

Secret #2: Pick action-packed verbs.
All verbs are either Static (to be, to seem, to become) or Dynamic (to whistle, to waffle, to wonder). The Static verbs are the ones that pour out naturally when we write or speak—“is” appears endlessly in most first drafts. But Dynamic verbs give writing power and drama. Rephrase sentences with Static verbs filling them with action. And not just any action: To describe someone walking down the street consider gambol, shamble, lumber, lurch, sway, swagger, and sashay.

Roger Angell packs his description of a baseball catcher with powerhouse verbs:

“He whacks his cap against his leg, producing a puff of dust, and settles it in place, its bill astern, with an oddly feminine gesture and then, reversing the movement, pulls on the mask and firms it with a soldierly downward tug. The hand dips between his thighs, semaphoring a plan….”

Angell notes all the little movements as well as the grand ones, and in his searches for the right verb drafts nouns if necessary (a semaphore is a hand-held signal flag).

Secret #3: Avoid adverbs.
If you pick pointed verbs, you’ll be able to forgo adverbs. Many adverbs merely prop up a ho-hum verb. Strike “speaks softly” and insert murmurs. Erase “eats quickly” in favor of hoovers.

Many adverbs are hauled in just to add emphasis—very, definitely, really, quite. But, oddly enough, in writing these actually subtract power. In lieu of “very pretty,” write fetching. Forget “extremely good”; favor delicious. Rather than “really nervous,” go with trembling.

Secret #4: Pare prepositional pileups.
Prepositions—words like on, of, above, beyond, near and next to—are little words that act like connective tissue in sentences. If we say “Let’s go to the store on the corner of my street,” we’ve used two prepositional phrases: “on the corner” tells us which store, and “of my street” tells us which corner. But isn’t it cleaner just to say “the corner store?”

Prepositional pileups can be distracting. Clear the clutter! Convert prepositional phrases into single words:

• now, not “at this point in time” or “in this day and age”
• for instead of “in the interest of”
• neat rather not than “neat in appearance”
• to believe is better than “to be of the opinion that”
• to consider over “take into consideration.”

Secret #5: Keep sentences lean and keep their parts parallel.
After picking the pearls, focus on how to string them onto the filament of the sentence. Start by tracking your subjects and verbs. After you’ve reviewed the verbs, making sure that they are dynamic and specific, do a subject check. Can you identify the person or thing that is performing the action? By controlling the subjects of individual sentences we control the focus of the entire piece.

The more you eliminate noun clutter, excessive adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional pileups, the closer your sentences will hew to these four basic sentence patterns:

Subject + Dynamic Verb
Subject + Dynamic Verb + Direct Object
Subject + Dynamic Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object
Subject + Static Verb + Complement

Don’t be afraid to keep your sentences stark. This lead from a newspaper story on California tofu industry, sticks to simple sentences and accomplishes both clarity and comedy: “It’s white. It’s weird. It wiggles on a plate.” The writer keeps tofu as her subject and resists the urge to insert herself (“I’ve always thought tofu…”). Then she follows each subject immediately with a verb (is/is/wiggles).

Muhammed Ali was a master of the powerful punch, whether physical or verbal. This rap from 1974 shows he can keep sentence parts parallel: “Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.” Ali keeps his subject steady and repeats the same construction as often as he does his jabs.

Secret #6: Play with sound and rhythm.
Ali also plays with musicality, with unexpected rhyme of “brick” and sick.” Begin to experiment with elements like rhyme, alliteration, and onomatopoeia. Alliteration repeats the initial sounds in words: sin and syntax, content of their character, Walter Winchell wannabe. Onomatopoeia allows the sound of a word to echo the sound of the thing: dishes crash, teeth gnash, and Saran Wrap crinkles.

Play also with rhythm. Choose short, single syllable words to set up a staccato rhythm (Churchill’s bracing “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat”), or more mellifluous words for a more melodious flow (Lincoln’s “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”). Vary the rhythm of sentences: Write a passage in short, crisp sentences. Write it again letting phrases elongate. Mix long and short, noting how short sentences pack a punch and how longer ones soften your message.

Secret #7: Make metaphors.
Metaphor, the comparison of disparate things, adds surprise, freshness, and depth. Don’t just repeat an old cliché (“tension so thick you could cut it with a knife”). Metaphors must be invented by the writer for the particular occasion. Theodore Roosevelt accused William McKinley of having “all the backbone of a chocolate éclair.” Novelist James Salter used “the silence of a folded flag” to describe the quiet of an afternoon in provincial France.

And, of course, Etienne Decroux was making a metaphor when he declared that “One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes.”

—Constance Hale

No one would accuse Joan Didion of being a grammar slouch. Yet here’s how she once described her knowledge: “Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All I know about grammar is its infinite power.”

Most of us also sense we missed some lessons along the way. But few of us can claim Joan Didion’s ear. It can take years to master the nuances of syntax, but it doesn’t take long to learn a few critical basics. “The seven deadly sins” are grammatical errors I see time and time again:

its v. it’s. Many of us may have learned our grade-school grammar too well. “Apostrophe s” is the sign for possession, right? So when an it owns something, we write it’s. But it’s is a contraction of it is. And contractions trumps possessives. So its is the possessive, as in “I love grammar and all its idiosyncracies.”

they v. he or she. He or she is cumbersome when you don’t know a person’s gender. We used to use the masculine he. Modern feminism made that unpalatable. Many writers try to be politically correct, using they, and end up grammatically incorrect. If gender is unknown, you have three good choices: 1) use he or she; 2) pick he in some instances, she in others; 3) make the antecedent plural and use they. (Instead of “a person must speak his or her mind” write “people must speak their minds.”

between you and I. Between is a preposition, and prepositions must be followed by objects. This means that the pronoun here must be me not I. Between you and me is correct.

who v. whom. Who is pronoun we use for the subject of a sentence, as in “Who called?” Whom is the pronoun we use for the object of a sentence, as in “You called whom?”

good v. well. How many times have you heard a sentence like “This car runs good”? Get this straight: Good is an adjective; it modifies a noun. Well is an adverb; it modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb. When a chef cooks well, a good steak is the result. When a writer writes well, the prose is good

fewer v. less. When you see a grocery store sign reading “12 items or fewer,” congratulate the manager. Fewer is the correct adjective whenthe noun it modifies is a plural comprising multiple units. Less is the correct adjective when the noun it modifies is something that is a mass, or an idea, rather than a number of units. Nonfat milk has fewer calories than whole milk; we should have less Coke in our diet than milk.

lay v. lie. Learn this to stay a step ahead of most writers and editors. Lay is a transitive verb. It must have an object to complete its meaning: A chicken lays eggs. Lie is an intransitive verb. It needs no object to make sense: The dog lies down. (Down is an adverb.)

All of us commit these sins-it’s hard not to when we keep hearing the wrong thing. But let a red flag pop up every time you use one of these terms. Stop and walk through the grammar. Then relax and have fun writing.

—Constance Hale

As far as playing with point of view, and not in blogs but in the pages of The New York Times and Rolling Stone, two of my favorite political journalists combine novel points of view with strong attitude and voice. They would be Mark Leibovich and Matt Taibbi.

Check out this story from November 2006 (one of my all-time favorites) by Leibovich. It’s written in the classic reportorial third person, but an awful lot of Leibovich seeps in. My favorite paragraph, describing President Bush after the “thumpin’” Republicans took in the primaries: “He looked worn at his must-see midday news conference, in need of a haircut, good-night’s sleep, better makeup job, hug, vacation in Crawford or some combination thereof. The grooves across his forehead were dark and articulated, his voice slightly hoarse. He wore a maroon tie, the color of blood.”

Then look at a 2007 profile of Mike Huckabee by Taibbi. He starts in the slangy second person (“you”), then writes the rest of the piece in the first.

I’ve been thinking about point of view. After all, what defines a blog if not point of view? A blog brings you one person’s prejudices, insights, and endless opinions. (Of course, the best blogs bring you much more—like new information, credible reporting, and, sometimes, bursts of brilliant writing.)

But a blog often comes alive because of another aspect of point of view, the literary aspect. The writer sets this point of view by his or her choice of pronouns—I, we, you, he, one, they. I’ve pondered what point of view to use here: The soul-bearing I? The inclusive we, which can also verge into the elegant “editorial we” or the arrogant “royal we”? Or the informal you, capable of sliding from authoritative, even bossy, to irreverent and hip?

Joan Didion once wrote about the act of choosing the first person singular point of view: “In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even a hostile act… There’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writers sensibility on the readers most private space.”

As you see, I’m going for I, not because I’m a secret bully, but because I want you, my reader, to know that this is really coming from me. This point of view will, I hope, let me gush about writing, even as the articles on the site may have the much more reasoned third-person perspective of the journalist and critic.

I’ll post more about this soon, but in the meantime, talk to me about point of view. Have you seen blogs that dare to diverge from the first person? Are there journalists who go for something more revealing than the detached third person? Can you think of a nonfiction writer who uses you like the novelist Jay McInerney?

Who out there is playing with point of view?