How to Write Good
by Frank L. Visco
(expanded by Alex Lockhart)
1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. A writer must not shift your point of view.
4. DO NOT overuse exclamation points and all caps to emphasize!!!
5. Place pronouns as closely as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
6. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
7. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
8. Always pick on the correct idiom.
9. Don't verb nouns.
10. Don't never use no double negatives.
11. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
12. Um, er, oh yeah. Avoid verbal static!
13. When dangling, watch your participles.
14. Use the apostrophe in it's proper place and omit it when its not needed.
15. Correct speling is esential.
16. Between you and I, case is important.
17. Using ellipses demonstrates...
18. Verbs has to agree with their antecedents.
19. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
20. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
21. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
22. Run on sentences cause all sorts of problems for readers and people should never use them and must try to write better and divide their sentences.
23. Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.
24. Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
25. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just where two-words are related.
26. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
27. Employ the vernacular.
28. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
29. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
30. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
31. Contractions aren't necessary.
32. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
33. One should never generalize.
34. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate
quotations. Tell me what you know."
35. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
36. Don't be redundant; don't more use words than necessary; it's highly
superfluous.
37. Profanity sucks.
38. Be more or less specific.
39. Understatement is always best.
40. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
41. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
42. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
43. The passive voice is to be avoided.
44. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
45. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
46. Who needs rhetorical questions?
47. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.
48. It is incumbent on us to eschew archaisms.
49. Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.
50. Don't string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
51. "Avoid overuse of 'quotation "marks."'"
52. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.
53. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized.
54. a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation
55. In letters compositions reports and things like that use commas to keep a string of items apart.
56. Vary your words variously so as to use various words.
57. Use language that includes all men.
58. Good writers do not use one verb tense in one part of a sentence, and then have switched to a different tense in the next.
59. Always be looking out for "be" verbs, for they are supplying verbiage all scholars are discouraging.
60. Use delightful but irrelevant extra adjectives and adverbs with sparing and parsimonious infrequency, for they unnecessarily bloat your otherwise perfect sentence.
61. Bee careful two use the write homonym.
62. Beware of malapropisms. They are a communist submersive plot.
63. Join clauses good like a conjunction should.
64. Continuity of thought, logical development and smooth transitions are important. Never leave the reader guessing.
65. Sentences without verbs--bad idea.
66. Use parallel structure when you write and in speaking.
67. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
[Frank L. Visco is a vice-president and senior copywriter at USAdvertising.]
With roots in tongues spoken all over the world, written English can be difficult to grasp. Spelling and grammar, even when correct, can deceive. For a few examples, read on:
* * *
English is Hard to Learn
We polish the Polish furniture.
He could lead if he would get the lead out.
A farm can produce produce.
The dump was so full it had to refuse refuse.
The soldier decided to desert in the desert.
The present is a good time to present the present.
At the Army base, a bass was painted on the head of a bass drum.
The dove dove into the bushes.
I did not object to the object.
The insurance for the invalid was invalid.
The bandage was wound around the wound.
There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
They were too close to the door to close it.
The buck does funny things when the does are present.
They sent a sewer down to stitch the tear in the sewer line.
To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
After a number of Novocain injections, my jaw got number.
I shed a tear when I saw the tear in my clothes.
I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
I spent last evening evening out a pile of dirt.
Authors often wonder whether to use 'hard' or 'easy' words in their texts. And if that doesn't stump you, here's some more fun with English.
* * *
Alternative Definitions
Attributed to a Washington Post reader's contest.
1. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.
2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
4. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent
5. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly
answer the door in your nightie.
6. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.
7. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.
8. Flatulence (n.), the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are
run over by a steamroller.
9. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.
10. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.
11. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.
12. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish
expressions.
13. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts.
14. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul goes
up on the roof and gets stuck there.
15. Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.
Do you rely heavily on your computer's spell checker? It beats nothing, but watch out!
* * *
Spell Checker Poem
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
English is filled with strange and flexible idioms. Sometimes a dictionary just isn't enough.
* * *
Play on Words
1. A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two-tired.
2. What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway).
3. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
4. A backwards poet writes inverse.
5. In democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.
6. She had a boyfriend with a wooden leg, but broke it off.
7. A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
8. If you don't pay your exorcist you get repossessed.
9. With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.
10. Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you A-flat minor.
11. When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.
12. The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
13. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
14. You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
15. Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.
16. He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.
17. Every calendar's days are numbered.
18. A lot of money is tainted. It taint yours and it taint mine.
19. A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
20. He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
21. A plateau is a high form of flattery.
22. The short fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
23. Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.
24. Once you've seen one shopping center you've seen a mall.
25. Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine.
26. When an actress saw her first strands of gray hair she thought she'd dye.
27. Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.
28. Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
29. Acupuncture is a jab well done.
30. Marathon runners with bad footwear suffer the agony of defeat.
