Writing#
I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead ~ Mark Twain
Tone of Voice#
The tone of voice should be casual, friendly and informative. It should not be authoritarian in nature. It should strive to target a broad audience of assumed intelligent and educated professionals who are simply unaware of certain practices. For further guidance, see the references section below
How to Write Good#
The contrarian guide
My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:
- Avoid alliteration. Always
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with
- Avoid cliches 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 more use 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?
- Ending punctuation should be omitted for lists.
- Ending punctuation should be omitted before newlines.