On communication

One of my QA/editing colleagues sent the quote below to the rest of the LinguaLinx QA/editing team:

“Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: ‘A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used.’ Those of us who use language as our principal tool of trade would do well to bear this in mind. The communication of an idea is not complete, and not useful, unless the meaning received corresponds with the meaning intended.”

from Word Watching by Julian Burnside