Plain talk is an art -- Let's start with Chinese -- Listen to plain talk -- Sentences come first -- Gadgets of language -- The grammar of gossip -- Here's your yardstick -- Live words -- Crowded words -- Empty words -- The gloamour of punctuation -- Turnabout rhetoric -- Follow the language -- Short cuts -- Talking down and reading up -- Can science be explained? -- The trouble with textbooks -- What price copy? -- How to read the Federal Register -- The juvenile touch -- One language after another -- The future of plain talk -- Appendix. How to use the yardstick formula.
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