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How To Write Good: by Frank L. Visco

The document provides 23 rules for writing good prose. Some key rules include avoiding alliteration, cliches, and ending sentences with prepositions. Contractions and foreign words should also be avoided. Keep language simple without unnecessary words. Understatement is better than exaggeration or analogies. Use active voice and avoid rhetorical questions.

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109 views

How To Write Good: by Frank L. Visco

The document provides 23 rules for writing good prose. Some key rules include avoiding alliteration, cliches, and ending sentences with prepositions. Contractions and foreign words should also be avoided. Keep language simple without unnecessary words. Understatement is better than exaggeration or analogies. Use active voice and avoid rhetorical questions.

Uploaded by

suprabhatt
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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HOW TO WRITE GOOD

by Frank L. Visco

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.


2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations.
Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly
superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

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