Guide to Grammar and Style -- Q
From the Guide to Grammar and Style by Jack Lynch.
Comments are welcome.
Quality may be the
most abused and overused word in business English. The word is a
noun, and means a characteristic or a degree of
excellence. Don't use quality as an adjective, as in a quality
product -- leave that sort of cant to advertising
copywriters. Use well made, good, useful,
something like that. Never use
quality as an adverb, as in
a quality-built product. Perhaps the best advice is: never
use quality.
Quite is almost always a space-waster; it usually softens
sentences that shouldn't be softened. See Wasted Words.
Quotation Marks.
See Punctuation and Quotation Marks.
Use the word quote as
a verb: you quote something, and that something is called a
quotation. Your English paper or newspaper article should
make good use of quotations, not quotes. [Entry
added 14 August 1999]