How to Write Good
1. Avoid alliteration. 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. Contractsions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "I have quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisions are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?
That's my kind of list. It's like, yeah, I know the rules, I just intend on breaking all of them as I write.
ReplyDeleteIt's perfection. And I think I'm going to hang it on my fridge to remind me that perfection is overrated.