3-31 How to Write Good

A handout from my writing class. Words to write by.

1. Avoid aliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquaialisms.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor signs, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
23. Eschew obfuscation.

These made me smile, but also made me realize I'm guilty of just about all of them. Take them away and what's left? Newspaper articles? LOL. I can see the case for not relying on any or all of the above, but a lot of them, to me, represent how a person would flavor his/her own creation, throwing in a pinch of this, a dash of that. Maybe it's just me and I am feeling threatened to have so many of my "crutches" branded as bad writing. LOL.

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Quote of the day: I had come here with Darin, a highly unlikely infatuation kindled in the furnace of parental disapproval. Lost reference.
Chosen because I immediately thought of my first boyfriend, and how my parent's dislike of him made him all the more attractive. I loved how the author puts this.