(by 4 people)
Frank Visco once said:
My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules...
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How to Write Articles for Newspapers & Magazines, 2/e (Step By Step (Thomson Learning (Firm)).)
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How to Write Good
- 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 generalise.
- 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?
- Be careful to use apostrophe's correctly.
- Do not use them pronouns as modifiers.
- And never start a sentence with a conjunction.
About the Author...
Frank L. Visco was the Vice-president and Senior Copywriter at USAdvertising.
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