Grammar And Style Guide - Q
- Quality.
- 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.
- 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.
- Quote.
- An old-timer's rule, probably on the way out, but I'm still kinda fond of it: 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]