Forget everything your teachers taught you in school and listen close: it's not about knowing how to diagram a sentence or tell the difference between elusion, illusion and allusion. Writing well is about getting ideas across in a way that makes people want to keep reading, and more importantly, not beat you about the head with your own work. I'll be giving simple tips for writing effective prose and not getting bogged down in trying to fit some paradigm of "good writing."
3. Don’t dress your writing up
with words you barely
understand. This just shows
that you own a thesaurus,
and doesn’t impress anyone.
4. Bad writing makes me want to
vomit.
Literally, it makes me ill.
Oh, and don’t misuse “literally.” Or “ironic,”
for that matter.
5. It would be ironic if I’d
misused the word “literally” in
my last slide. If you don’t
understand the concept, you
have no business using this
word.
6. Things that are NOT ironic:
• Winning the lottery and dying the next day
(coincidence)
• Good advice that you didn’t take (bad
judgment)
• Meeting the man of your dreams and then
meeting his beautiful wife (bad luck)
10. Good writing is quick and
clean. Don’t add a bunch of
superfluous verbiage to try to
make yourself sound better.
It’s just gross.
11. I am allowed to use phrases like
“superfluous verbiage” because I am
awesome. I know what those words
mean. And I consider my audience is
intelligent.
Dig?
14. Learn the rules. Then discard them as
necessary.
• Some of the rules are really important!
– Noun and verb (number) agreement
– Proper punctuation
– Run-on sentences
• Some of the rules are kinda BS!
– Splitting your verb phrase
– Using contractions
– Fragments