Earlier this year, The Spectator magazine ran a competition asking for 150 words of advice to intending writers purporting to be from well-known writers.   Had he still been alive, this would have been the advice that Henry James would not have given:

The – and it is, one would venture, most appropriate to deploy the definite article in this, admittedly ambiguous, context, although many may well disagree, and so the utterance will surely not remain uncontested, but, one hopes, always unrebutted – first – because the established custom in our society, at least that part having a certain level of education and – how shall I best acknowledge this? – breeding, is to denumerate from the first numeral, for, after all, exactly how could no elements even be articulated, let alone counted? – rule – although our society, however flawed, and it is flawed, is law-governed, or rather aspires to be thus – is – and there can be none, at least none of social consequence, who could argue or question what the meaning of is is – to be – for we are dealing with the invocation of existence in reference to something primeval, inchoate, even struggling to be birth-éd – concise.”