I'm burdened with lots of work for my summer graduate classes and a number of tight article deadlines, which is why I've been largely absent these last few weeks. So, I'm recycling an old blog entry from August of 2006 that will hopefully be useful, especially to those who are still "Undiscovered"!

I don’t claim to be a brilliant writer - or even a completely grammatical one, which should be abundantly obvious from this humble blog - but I do a fair amount of editing, and I’m admittedly rougher on other people’s work than my own. Here are my top ten stylistic tips for aspiring writers, many of which are scavenged from Strunk & White.

This list could also be called “how to not let your editor know you’re an amateur”.

1. Don’t ever say “the fact that”. It weakens your sentence. You don’t need to point out that it’s a fact if it is a fact, because facts, by nature, are self-evident.

2. Same with “very”. Please, use very very sparingly, and only when it’s very necessary to prove your point.

3. Cut, cut, cut. And then cut some more. Everyone is too long-winded in their first draft, so please, cut it down by one-third. Say what you mean, and be done with it.

4. Stop using adjectives and adverbs, in general, unless they’re key to the phrase and your readers’ understanding. You may think it sounds nice, but it’s just too dang wordy.

5. Find out what the passive voice is, and then don’t use it.

6. Please learn your/you’re, its/it’s, and there/their/they’re. This was something we learned in the third grade, and when you use these words improperly, it immediately drags your writing down. They're relatively easy to learn and remember, and you won't be sorry.

7. Don’t ever use all-caps, and refrain from using italics unless you have a compelling reason. Your phrasing should provide the emphasis for the word. If it doesn’t, revise. (This, by the way, is my main quibble with novelist John Irving.)

8. Please use paragraph breaks. And remember, there’s rarely a reason to have more than five sentences in a paragraph. I’d rather have a too-choppy essay that I can paste together than a huge block of text that I just can’t read.

9. Do not use cliched metaphors - “big as a house”, “tired as a dog”, etc. They make no impact on the reader because they’re commonplace. Find a new description, something that will prompt a doubletake in your reader and make them smile.

10. Learn to punctuate.

And please, take it all with a grain of salt!

Addendum: From a much better writer, here are Kurt Vonnegut's rules for writing.