How To Write Good
by Frank L. Visco
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?
Frank L. Visco is a vice-president
and senior copywriter at USAdvertising.
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