Use Your Own Language.

I mean the language you are accustomed to use in daily life. David did
much better with his sling than he would have done with Saul's sword and
spear. And Hatty Fielding told me, only last week, that she was very sorry
she wore her cousin's pretty brooch to an evening dance, though Fanny had
really forced it on her. Hatty said, like a sensible girl as she is, that
it made her nervous all the time. She felt as if she were sailing under
false colors. If your every-day language is not fit for a letter or for
print, it is not fit for talk. And if, by any series of joking or fun, at
school or at home, you have got into the habit of using slang in talk,
which is not fit for print, why, the sooner you get out of it the better.
Remember that the very highest compliment paid to anything printed is paid
when a person, hearing it read aloud, thinks it is the remark of the
reader made in conversation. Both writer and reader then receive the
highest possible praise.

It is sad enough to see how often this rule is violated. There are
fashions of writing. Mr. Dickens, in his wonderful use of exaggerated
language, introduced one. And now you can hardly read the court report in
a village paper but you find that the ill-bred boy who makes up what he
calls its "locals" thinks it is funny to write in such a style as this:--

"An unfortunate individual who answered to the somewhat well-worn
sobriquet of Jones, and appeared to have been trying some experiments as
to the comparative density of his own skull and the materials of the
sidewalk, made an involuntary appearance before Mr. Justice Smith."

Now the little fool who writes this does not think of imitating Dickens.