20 Tips - How to Write Good

Some amusing ‘plays on words’ from New York Times language expert William Safire and advertising executive and copywriter Frank LaPosta Visco.

The humour comes from the fact that the sentence does exactly what it tells us not to do.

Taken from February's issue of Chinwag International Student Magazine

1. Always avoid alliteration.
2. Always pick on the correct phrasal verb.
3. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
4. Contractions aren’t necessary.
5. Don’t never use no double negatives.
6. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!!!
7. Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
8. Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
9. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
10. One should never generalize.
11. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
12. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
13. Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas
14. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
15. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
16. Subject and verb always has to agree.
17. Understatement is always the absolute best.
18. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
19. Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
20. Who needs rhetorical questions?

* The title of this piece ‘How to Write Good’ is deliberately bad English. ‘Good’ is an adjective and should be used with a noun. To modify a verb we need to use ‘well’ i.e. ‘How to Write Well’.