2. Record words with which you are familiar but you never use—and then "work" them.
3. Make a list of important, unfamiliar words which you hear, or discover in your reading.
4. Listen carefully to the conversations or addresses of educated people.
5. If possible, try to translate from a foreign language. In this way a fine perception of shades of meaning, almost unattainable by any other method, is acquired.
6. Get interested in the dictionary, where you can trace the life history of words.
THE PICTORIAL POWER OF WORDS
"Words have a considerable share in exciting ideas of beauty—they affect the mind by raising in it ideas of those things for which custom has appointed them to stand. Words, by their original and pictorial power have great influence over the passions; if we combine them properly, we may give new life and beauty to the simplest object. In painting, we may represent any fine figure we please, but we never can give it those enlivening touches which it may receive from words. For example, we can represent an angel in a picture by drawing a young man winged: but what painting can furnish out anything so grand as the addition of one word—'the angel of the Lord'? Is there any painting more grand and beautiful?"—Edmund Burke.
CAPITALIZATION
Capitalize titles preceding names, as, Chief of Detectives Fox, Gen. Bell. Lower-case titles following names, as John Downey, superintendent of police, except these which are capitalized always: