Andy's Writing Tip of the Day
I bet you all thought (hoped?) that I had given up on this idea, but no, here I am to share with you tips from my overpriced education. Today's tip is a little tricky, as it really doesn't apply that well to the world of blogging, given the nature of most blogs. Most blogs are personal on-line diaries, and thus are the thoughts and lives of the author. Thus it is a perfectly fine stylistic choice to inject oneself into that which they are writing. However, it isn't as acceptable a practice in other forms of writing, such as essays, formal e-mails, newsletters, or even reviews.
As this is a stylistic tip, not a grammatical one, it is not necessarily gospel. I sometimes find myself in violation of this tip, sometimes as a valid stylistic choice, sometimes just as a matter of sloppy writing. Thus, I decided to reproduce it here to keep it in mind and perhaps help others. Cause I'm all about the helping of others.
Do not affect a breezy manner.
The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his [or her] head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day. Open any alumni magazine, turn to the class notes, and you are quite likely to encounter the old Spontaneous Me at work --an aging collegian who writes something like this:
Well, chums, here I am again with my bagful of dirt about your disorderly classmates, after spending a helluva weekend in N'Yawk trying to view the Columbia game from behind two bumbershoots and a glazed cornea. And speaking of news, howzabout tossing a few chirce nuggets my way?
This is an extreme example, but the same wind blows, at lesser velocities, across vast expanses of journalistic prose. The author in this case has managed in two sentences to commit most of the unpardonable sins: he obviously has nothing to say, he is showing off and directing the attention of the reader to himself, he is using slang with neither provocation nor ingenuity, he adopts a patronizing air by throwing in the word chirce, he is tasteless, humorless (though full of fun), dull, and empty.
"An Approach to Style (With a List of Reminders)" by E.B. White
I bolded the two most damning indictments of this style of writing to serve as a stronger reminder to avoid this tendency in more structured writing because I don't know if there's anything worse than writing several sentences that show that you have nothing to say, and being incredibly unfunny in doing so (while trying ever so hard to be impish and witty). *shudder*
As this is a stylistic tip, not a grammatical one, it is not necessarily gospel. I sometimes find myself in violation of this tip, sometimes as a valid stylistic choice, sometimes just as a matter of sloppy writing. Thus, I decided to reproduce it here to keep it in mind and perhaps help others. Cause I'm all about the helping of others.
Do not affect a breezy manner.
The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his [or her] head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day. Open any alumni magazine, turn to the class notes, and you are quite likely to encounter the old Spontaneous Me at work --an aging collegian who writes something like this:
Well, chums, here I am again with my bagful of dirt about your disorderly classmates, after spending a helluva weekend in N'Yawk trying to view the Columbia game from behind two bumbershoots and a glazed cornea. And speaking of news, howzabout tossing a few chirce nuggets my way?
This is an extreme example, but the same wind blows, at lesser velocities, across vast expanses of journalistic prose. The author in this case has managed in two sentences to commit most of the unpardonable sins: he obviously has nothing to say, he is showing off and directing the attention of the reader to himself, he is using slang with neither provocation nor ingenuity, he adopts a patronizing air by throwing in the word chirce, he is tasteless, humorless (though full of fun), dull, and empty.
"An Approach to Style (With a List of Reminders)" by E.B. White
I bolded the two most damning indictments of this style of writing to serve as a stronger reminder to avoid this tendency in more structured writing because I don't know if there's anything worse than writing several sentences that show that you have nothing to say, and being incredibly unfunny in doing so (while trying ever so hard to be impish and witty). *shudder*