by Frank L. Visco
My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:
- Avoid alliteration. Always.
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
- Avoid cliche like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
- Employ the vernacular.
- Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
- It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
- Contractions aren’t necessary.
- Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
- One should never generalize.
- Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
- Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
- Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s.highly superfluous.
- Profanity sucks.
- Be more or less specific.
- Understatement is·always best
- Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
- One-word sentences? Eliminate.
- Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
- The passive voice is to be avoided
- Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
- Even if a mixed metaphor sings,it should be derailed.
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
Hah! Love it! I am reblogging this!
LikeLike
Reblogged this on Slo-Word and commented:
I love it – this post learned me everything I must do to write rightly!
LikeLike
So rad! But i feel if i employed all those suggestions, there would be nothing to write! Lol.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Reblogged this on Constructive Undoing.
LikeLike
Reblogged this on TheBoronHeist and commented:
Amazing.
LikeLike
Hehe! Too amusing. 🙂 Thanks Kenneth Harper Finton (via Slo-Word) for rescuing us mere mortals from wrongly writing….
LikeLike
I also have Helioliterature,(heliosliterature.com), Sharable Snippets (kennethfinton.com), several under blogger as well. This one is my personal scrapbook.
LikeLike