your inviolable rules of writing

[Joe Williams]

Limerick ledes are vastly overrated.

I feel the same about narrative leads, because they're often used lazily, bringing the reader to a scene that isn't all that compelling in the first place. False drama. Should be rare, IMO.

Oh and one-word "leads" are big-time fail.

 

[inthesuburbs]

Choose words carefully.

For example, have you noticed how many sportswriters (and others) confuse "trend" and "pattern"? The CBS column (link below) says only one out of three HOF voters on staff would vote for Barry Bonds. The writer calls this ratio "an ominous trend." It may be ominous, for Bonds, but it's no forking trend. To be a trend, it has to be changing, moving, over time, from this to that. What you have there is an ominous pattern, a still picture, not a moving one.

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/19767792/bonds-a-hall-of-famer-before-peds-which-is-why-he-belongs-in-cooperstown

 

[nate41]

File cleanly and on time.

Don't say something in ten words when you can say it in five. The copy editing I've done hasn't been on deadline, but this drives me crazy.

My peeve is "would go on to" i.e.... Player X opened the scoring in the first and would go on to find the net three more times.

 

[SockPuppet]

Get paid.

 

[SockPuppet]

I've always liked SockPuppet's sig from an Esquire editor: "Will you stop trying to write like Charlie Pierce, BECAUSE YOU forkING CAN'T!!!!"

Thanks for noticing, Uncle.

 

[Dog8Cats]

All of the above mentioned, of course. Such as " ... and would go on to ... ." Don't use subjunctive unless you know why you're using it.

And "begs the question ... . " Good god. Know what you're writing.

Using an "unidentified source close to the situation" (because the source didn't want to be identified with Fact X) in the same story that said source is quoted and identified (because the source was OK with being identified with Fact Y). Chickenshirt. Unfair to readers.

"East High School won its first road game ... " when the victory came in East's fifth road game.

"underclassman" ... freshman or sophomore ONLY. NOT JUNIOR. Use "early entrant" or "non-senior."

"freshmen" misused as an adjective. It's not "The freshmen linebackers ... ," just like it's not "The seniors linebackers ... "

First name in a feature almost always better be the subject. First score in a gamer MUST be the final.

Gamers that have a quote from only one side of the outcome.

"... would find himself ... " ... unless you're writing about someone who went missing.

"circa July 18, 1974"

Trying too hard to show that one is a Writer: "And so it was that ... " ... "And with every passing day ... "

The needless detail that tries to demonstrate that you take note of every detail: "He said while munching on a tuna salad sandwich, which he ordered made specially, without the chopped celery."

I'd better stop.

 

[Versatile]

"East High School won its first road game ... " when the victory came in East's fifth road game.

Similarly, the team didn't win a much-needed game.

 

[typefitter]

Get paid.

Seconded. Words put in good and entertaining order have value.

 

[HejiraHenry]

"Begs the question" doesn't mean "raises the question."

Thank you. A huge peeve of mine.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

1. The word win is not a noun. Deskers keep it alive because it fits in a one-column head.

A mentor drummed in this and a lot of other rigid stuff into me, and that kind of schooling had value, no doubt. But being who I am, I sometimes rebeled. I came back from a tryout at a bigger, looser paper and my boss asked how it went. I told him, just to pish him off a little, that "I used win as a noun and host as a verb and it felt good." That's not to say I've abandoned every antiquated nuance he taught me. Twenty-eight years later, I catch myself not fixing some picayune point and I hear his voice in the back of my head.

Stuff like win and host, I've let go. Even Theodore Bernstein wrote in "Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer's Guide to Taboos, Bugbears and Outmoded Rules of English Usage" that he normally doesn't have a problem with changing nouns to verbs (and I assume vice versa). I draw the line there when it's a fad usage, coachspeak or managementspeak.

 

[Dog8Cats]

1. The word win is not a noun. Deskers keep it alive because it fits in a one-column head.

A mentor drummed in this and a lot of other rigid stuff into me, and that kind of schooling had value, no doubt. But being who I am, I sometimes rebeled. I came back from a tryout at a bigger, looser paper and my boss asked how it went. I told him, just to pish him off a little, that "I used win as a noun and host as a verb and it felt good." That's not to say I've abandoned every antiquated nuance he taught me. Twenty-eight years later, I catch myself not fixing some picayune point and I hear his voice in the back of my head.

Stuff like win and host, I've let go. Even Theodore Bernstein wrote in "Miss Thistlebottom's Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer's Guide to Taboos, Bugbears and Outmoded Rules of English Usage" that he normally doesn't have a problem with changing nouns to verbs (and I assume vice versa). I draw the line there when it's a fad usage, coachspeak or managementspeak.

Without being too presumptious, I'd guess that you KNEW you were using a noun as a verb, etc. It's a lot easier to accept someone "breaking" the rules if he knows the rules. How many self-styled "Writers" even know what the passive voice is? Or know what "circa" means? Or realize that they are abusing a phrase ("when Kembo Walker broke his ankles" ... "And so it was that ... ")? ... Good editors notice these things. It's because 1) They're paid to and 2) They get accustomed to reading copy much more carefully than the writers themselves.

 

[joe]

Report first. Report second. Report third. Write. Revise. Write again. Write again. Say fork it, turn it in and always believe you could have done it better.

Twenty years later, there are stories I would love another crack at because I sucked at them the first time around.