Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: rewrite.

rewrite. “Rewrite” is both noun and verb, although “write” itself cannot be a noun. E.g.: o “The play, meanwhile, could stand a good rewrite.” Scott Collins, “‘Pants on Fire’: A Smothered Attempt,” L.A. Times, 21 Oct. 1994, at 26. o “A good rewrite of the Endangered Species Act would balance the costs and benefits of preserving each and every species and subspecies.” “Endangered Species,” San Diego Union-Trib., 18 Mar. 1995, at B6. For information about the Language-Change Index, click here. ——————– Quotation of the Day: “The prose of today (if any generalizations can be made about so various a thing) is less formal, more rapid and practical; it travels light, throwing off the weight of convention, decoration, or structural complexity. At its worst this makes it seem harried, mean, flaccid, or flat; but at its best it can be pungent, sinewy, clear, and wrought, but achieving an art of its own, reaching a larger number of minds, and supporting a larger number of artisans than has been possible in former ages.” Stuart Robertson & Frederick Cassidy, “World English” (1954), in A Language Reader for Writers 214, 214 (James R. Gaskin & Jack Suberman eds., 1966).
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