I was out and about recently and espied this notice in the train station:
Use the handrail, by Terry Freedman
Here is what I don't understand: how are you supposed to run on the handrail? Especially when it's so narrow
This book may be thirty years old, but its advice is still pertinent. If you want to have a blitz or crackdown against, or shake-up of, bad writing (all examples of 'tabloidese'), then this is the book for you.
When did “interesting” become a synonym for “useful”? If anything, when the word “interesting” is used by an English person, usually means the opposite.
Here’s a piece of writing I submitted for a creative writing course at the City Lit. It was received quite well, and one of the other students said it was the most accurate description of Santa Monica that she’d ever read. Others liked the dialogue. Me? I still chuckle over the misunderstanding about drive-in movies!
This course will look at examples of constraints created by some of the Oulipo’s main proponents, including the Hundred Thousand Billion Sonnets, the Metro Poem, and others.
A girl I taught was highly intelligent, very helpful and had a great sense of humour. Unfortunately, though, whenever she disagreed with somebody she immediately flew into a temper, insulted them and told them to go forth and multiply — though rather more crudely than that. I imagine she has a huge following on Twitter these days, as that seems to be the main way of “communicating” for a lot of people.
When you pick up an English edition of a foreign language book, you have to rely on the good intentions and skill of the translator. But can they be trusted?
New words are always interesting, I think, and not just the ones that have been inspired by technology. But before I say any more about that, I feel the need to get something off my chest. Don’t worry, I won’t make this a long post: the last thing I want is people tweeting me to say TL;DR (too long; didn’t read).
Why do some writers write badly? Plus links to examples of bad writing.