rules of writing

The 58 most commonly misused words and phrases

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Today’s post is by Richard Feloni, off of the Independent website, on November 30, 2015.  In the article, Richard reviews linguist Steven Pinker‘s “The Sense of Style” and the most commonly misused words and phrases, some of which you will find in the recent post Quick Hacks for the Top Misused Words.

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Whether you’re trying to sound sophisticated or simply repeating what you’ve heard, word fails are all too common and can make smart people sound dumb.smiley-emoticons-face-vector-smart-expression_X1ZqT-_L

In his latest book, “The Sense of Style,” Harvard cognitive scientist and linguist Steven Pinker explores the most common words and phrases that people stumble over.

The book is like a modern version of Strunk and White’s classic “The Elements of Style,” but one based on linguistics and updated for the 21st century.

Since there is no definitive body governing the rules of the English language like there is for the French language, for example, matters of style and grammar have always remained relatively debatable. Pinker’s rules and preferences are no different, but the majority of the words and phrases he identifies are agreed upon and can help your writing and speaking.

We’ve highlighted the most common mistakes according to Pinker using examples directly from his book along with some of our own.

Here are the main ones to look out for:

• Adverse means detrimental and does not mean averse or disinclined.

Correct: “There were adverse effects.” / “I’m not averse to doing that.”

• Appraise means to ascertain the value of and does not mean to apprise or to inform.

Correct: “I appraised the jewels.” / “I apprised him of the situation.”

• As far as means the same as but cannot be used the same way as as for.

Correct: “As far as the money is concerned …” / As for the money …

• Begs the question means assumes what it should be proving and does not mean raises the question.

Correct: “When I asked the dealer why I should pay more for the German car, he said I would be getting ‘German quality,’ but that just begs the question.”

• Bemused means bewildered and does not mean amused.

Correct: The unnecessarily complex plot left me bemused. / The silly comedy amused me.

Read the full post on the Independent website

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

The Consistency Of Your Voice

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This post by Ksenia Anske originally appeared on her site on 9/29/15.

You know that feeling you get when you read a fantastic book and it gives you shivers? When every page you turn makes you want to read more and more, and every sentence is so bloody good you want to read it twice and when you get to the end you’re devastated the book is over? I have been pondering about this lately, having recently read three books that took my breath away, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA by Ernest Hemingway and THE RITUAL by Adam Nevill and CRUDDY by Lynda Barry, and having dug up more information on all [the] authors and having read this interview with Adam Nevill and having put WHAT IT IS by Lynda Barry (a book on her creative method) and Hemingway’s ON WRITING on hold at the library, and all this pondering led me to write this post.

What was it so special about these books that got me?

The consistency of the voices. And where does this consistency come from? From rewriting until you bleed out of your eyes, it seems. In his interview Adam said that “there are ten versions of The Ritual on my computer. In fact there are some chapters that I cut out. Although I really liked the chapters, my inner reader said: this doesn’t feel right…. You have to trust your inner reader, write a draft and then leave it. When you go back to it, ensure you look at it with fresh eyes. If you’re only able to write a couple of evenings a week, because of work and other commitments, every time you return to it, you often find that the voice has changed. A lot of the re-writing is about making the voice consistent throughout.”

 

Read the full post on Ksenia Anske’s site.

 

Writing Begins With Forgiveness: Why One of the Most Common Pieces of Writing Advice Is Wrong

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This post by Daniel José Older originally appeared on Seven Scribes on 9/9/15.

Writing advice blogs say it. Your favorite writers say it. MFA programs say it.

Write every single day.

It’s one of the most common pieces of writing advice and it’s wildly off base. I get it: The idea is to stay on your grind no matter what, don’t get discouraged, don’t slow down even when the muse isn’t cooperating and non-writing life tugs at your sleeve. In this convoluted, simplified version of the truly complex nature of creativity, missing a day is tantamount to giving up, the gateway drug to joining the masses of non-writing slouches.

Nonsense.

Here’s what stops more people from writing than anything else: shame. That creeping, nagging sense of ‘should be,’ ‘should have been,’ and ‘if only I had…’ Shame lives in the body, it clenches our muscles when we sit at the keyboard, takes up valuable mental space with useless, repetitive conversations. Shame, and the resulting paralysis, are what happen when the whole world drills into you that you should be writing every day and you’re not.

 

Read the full post on Seven Scribes.

 

Raising Questions in Our Stories

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This post by Elizabeth Spann Craig originally appeared on her site on 8/24/15.

One thing that can trip up even experienced writers is giving everything away in the story too quickly.

It’s always a temptation for me. I tend to want to reveal things too quickly in my story. I want to explain everything as it happens so that readers won’t be confused.

But when I reveal too much, I end up halfway through the story without enough material to make a full-length novel.

Areas where it may help to raise questions:

Questions about character behavior. Sometimes character motivation isn’t clear. But as long as that character is behaving consistently, readers will want to learn why the character is acting that way.

 

Read the full post on Elizabeth Spann Craig’s site.

 

Fueling the Muse—How to Mentally Prepare for “The Novel”

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This post by Kristen Lamb originally appeared on her blog on 8/27/15.

NaNoWriMo is kind of like Christmas for writers—suffering, drama, no sleep, heavy drinking and really bad eating habits. Also, we start talking about NaNoWriMo months before it actually happens.

If you are a new writer and don’t know what NaNoWriMo is? It stands for National Novel Writing Month and it is held for the duration of November. The goal is to write 50,000 words in a month.

In a nutshell, it gives a taste of what it is like to do this writing thing as a job, because for the professional writer? Every month is NaNoWriMo, so there is NO BETTER indoctrination into this business.

NaNo shapes us from hobbyists to pros, but we need to do some preparation if we want to be successful—finish 50,000 words and actually have something that can be revised into a real novel that others might part with money to read. Genre obviously will dictate the fuel required, but today we’ll explore my favorites.

Movies

I like watching movies to strengthen my plotting muscles. Unlike novels, screenplays have very strict structure rules. Also, it takes far less time to watch a movie than read a novel, so movies can be fantastic for practice (and also our goofing off can have a practical application 😀 ) .

Study plot points. Sit with a notebook and see if you can write out each of these major points in one to three sentences.

 

Read the full, lengthy post, which goes into full detail on plotting / story arc in the novel, on Kristen Lamb’s blog.

 

I Smell Your Rookie Moves, New Writers

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 8/26/15. Warning: strong language.

I am occasionally in a place where I read work by new writers. Sometimes this is at cons or conferences. Sometimes it’s in the sample of work that’s free online or a fragment from a self-published work. Sometimes I just roll over in my bed and there it is, a manuscript by a new writer, haunting me like a vengeful incubus.

I would very much like to yell at you.

Now, listen, before I begin the part where I scream myself hoarse about the things you’re doing wrong, I want you to understand that we’ve all been there. We’ve all done it poorly. Doing it poorly is the first step to, well, not doing it poorly. I have written my fair share of HOT PUKE, and it’s just one of those things you have to purge from your system.

(Though here we also enter into another caveat: HOT PUKE is not actually a delicacy. You do that shit over in the corner, barfing it up in the potted plant so nobody sees until morning. You don’t yak up today’s lunch in the middle of the living room and then do jazz-hands over it: “Ta-da! The Aristocrats!” What I’m trying to say is, your rookie efforts are not automatically worth putting out into the world, especially if those efforts cost readers money to access them. The mere existence of a story is not justification for its publication. Don’t make people give you cash for your inferior efforts. Get it right before you ask money to reward you for getting it wrong.)

Here, then, are some things I have noticed in drafts by new or untested writers, and these are I think standard errors — and they’re ones also that tested authors sometimes stumble into, so peruse this list, see if you have stropped up against any of these sins like a randy tomcat, and then fix your business. Get it? Got it? Good?

Let the yelling commence.

 

Read the full post, which includes many specific writerly mistakes with illustrative examples, on terribleminds.

 

How to Use the Passive Voice Correctly

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This post by Kimberly Joki originally appeared on the Grammarly Blog.

The passive voice is a misunderstood entity in the world of writing. It is unfairly judged by many authors. Some writers, without taking the time to get to know this grammatical structure, avoid it at all costs. Others use it ineffectively because they do not understand how it works. How can you get to know this mysterious literary device?

First, let’s start with an explanation of what passive voice is. Passive voice sentences mention the thing or person receiving an action before mentioning the action itself, and may omit the actor altogether. For example, consider this sentence:

The leaves were blown by the wind.

The leaves receive the action of being blown. In the example, the agent is specified with the preposition by. However, the agent could have been left out of the sentence: The leaves were blown.

When is it proper to use passive voice? Consider these instances.

 

Read the full post on the Grammarly Blog.

 

How Mad Max: Fury Road Turns Your Writing Advice Into Roadkill

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This post by Chuck Wendig originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 5/26/15. Warning: strong language.

Said it before, will say it again: Mad Max: Fury Road is the dust-choked rocket-fueled orifice-clenching crank-mad feminist wasteland batfuck doomsday opera you didn’t know you needed. It’s like eating fireworks. It’s like being inside a rust tornado. It’s like having a defibrillator pad applied directly to your genitals but somehow, you love it?

It’s not a perfect movie.

But it’s amazing just the same.

And part of — for me! — what makes it amazing is how easily it flaunts its rule-breaking. Writing — particularly the very-patterned art of screenwriting — comes with all these preconceived sets of “rules” or “guidelines,” and like most creative rules and guidelines, they’re half-useful and half-dogdick. It’s great once in a while to be reminded why the rules work. But it can be even more illuminating to realize when something works in spite of those rules — in direct contravention to what you expect can and should happen.

And I wanna talk about that just a little. Real quick.

Hold still. *fires up the defib pads*

CLEAR.

bzzt

Begins With Action And Then Action Action Holy Fuck More Action

Beginning with action is hard. Because a lot of the time, you need context. You jump right into some actionstravaganza and you feel lost — unmoored, drifting, caught up in OMG THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE EXCITING BUT MOSTLY IT FEELS LIKE ACTION FIGURES BEING FIRED OUT OF A CANNON AGAINST A WALL BECAUSE I DO NOT YET HAVE A REASON TO CARE. It’s all whizz-bang-boom, but ultimately? Hollow as a used grenade. Shallow as a puddle of sun-baked urine.

Fury Road is like, “Yeah, fuck you, mate,” and then instantly there’s a car chase? And then like, five minutes of setup and another car chase that goes until the middle of the movie? And then a sequel to that car chase that ends the movie. On paper, that shouldn’t work. On screen, it roars like an engine and drags you behind it like you’re chained to the goddamn bumper.

 

Read the full post on terribleminds.

 

On The Length Of A Story

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This post by Alan Baxter originally appeared on his Warrior Scribe site on 5/22/15. Warning: strong language.

There’s been a bit of to and fro via The Guardian recently about fantasy novels and short stories. Firstly Damien Walter wrote this pile of bollocks about how publishers need to stop encouraging big fat fantasy multi-book series. Then Natasha Pulley responded with this bullshit about how fantasy just can’t be done in short books, and especially not in short stories. I do wish people would stop trying to proscribe what the rest of us like to read and write.

You know what? A good story is exactly as long as it needs to be or it’s not a good story. Simple as that. If that means a fat book trilogy, or a ten book mega-series, or one thin novel or novella, or a short story, it doesn’t matter. A good story is good because it’s told in the right amount of space it needs. A really good story is made from great ideas, wonderfully written, using exactly the time and space required.

Sure there are plenty of rubbish, bloated books out there and loads of short stories that fall flat. But even the shite stuff has found its niche if its successful, because people are reading and enjoying it. If people are reading and enjoying something, get the fuck off your high horse trying to tell those people that they should be reading and enjoying something else.

 

Read the full post on Warrior Scribe.

 

My 4 Golden Rules of Writing

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This post by Nicholas C. Rossis originally appeared on his site on 8/26/14.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now. The main reason is that I keep coming across several writing rules that make little sense to me. Then, I came across a gem of a post by Constance Hale, “When Shakespeare Committed Word Crimes” on TED.

Constance confirmed what I long suspected: when there is tension in a language between what comes naturally and the rules, it’s because someone has tried to shoehorn the language into their idea of conformity.

Does this mean there are no rules? Not at all. It just means that the ones we are taught in workshops and classrooms are not necessarily the ones that matter to actual readers – as opposed to teachers, agents and editors. So, here are my golden rules; the ones no fiction writer should ever break, in my view:

 

Rule #1: Don’t let your writing get in the way of your story.
I know I say this all the time, but it bears repeating. Fragment your sentences. Break the rules. Hemingway is considered the “master of the short sentence,” but when his stories reach a climax, he will suddenly write long sentences—as long as three or four hundred words even. So, throw caution to your wind. Have fun with the language.

 

Read the full post on Nicholas C. Rossis’ site.

 

One Rule To… Er… Rule Them All

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This post by Greta van der Rol originally appeared on Spacefreighters Lounge on 4/16/15.

On Facebook I belong to a number of different writers’ groups. Recently, this meme was posted on one of them.

Elmore Leonard on writing

There is nothing more likely to have me doing expletives deleted than seeing a list of “thou shalts” telling prospective authors that this is how they have to do it. Especially with a famous name tagged on to the end. Don’t get me wrong, GENERALLY speaking, I would agree that each of these points deserves consideration. But the only one that is really, absolutely, no-holds-barred, TRUE is number…

See if you can work it out.

I particularly object to the word NEVER in these ‘rules’. Never is black and white. Let’s look at the ‘nevers’ in this list.

 

Read the full post on Spacefreighters Lounge.

 

Five "Show Don't Tell" Danger Zones

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This post by Diana Hurwitz originally appeared on The Blood Red Pencil on 3/5/15.

Showing is illustrated through actions and interiority rather than the author telling us how the character is reacting and behaving.

Telling often involves adverbs and adjectives. Look for bland descriptive words like: attractive, dumb, embarrassing, fabulous, fascinating, handsome, hilarious, mad, powerful, pretty, smart, stunning, stupid, tired, and ugly. Telling is fertile ground for clichés. Make it fresh.

Here are five danger zones to watch out for.

 

1. Action: Don’t tell us what a character does; describe what constitutes the action.

Telling: Dick worked hard.

Showing: Dick wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. He lifted the axe and swung: thunk, swipe, thunk. The chunk of wood sheared into small pieces. Each blow reverberated through his shoulders and back.

Telling: Jane walked quickly through the aisles, tossing in items without looking at them.

 

Read the full post on The Blood Red Pencil.

 

Once Upon a Time…

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This post by Lee Kofman originally appeared on Writers Victoria on 1/20/15.

The beginning of yet another year makes me think about other beginnings – those first pages, paragraphs, sentences, words that pull readers into our tales. How do we make them sing?

Most obviously, banality is the enemy of good writing. Yet in many openings of published and unpublished works I read clichés creep in, often because of the current fashion to begin stories mid-scene, where characters are ‘doing’ something. Such an opening can be effective of course, yet scene-writing – with its focus on the action – lends itself to clichés. How many books begin with someone staring out of the window at a meadow, or running for their lives, or tracing something cool with their finger? We can get away more easily with such descriptions in the middle, but to entice intelligent strangers to stick with our stories we need to work harder.

Think of this beginning:

‘In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. “Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”’

This is the opening of ‘The Great Gatsby’, hailed by some critics as ‘the perfect novel’. Here we are at once plunged not into the action, but into the mind of the narrator who confides something urgent to us, thereby immediately creating intimacy with the readers. Moreover, this start hints at a dramatic narrative to do with moral dilemmas around our tendency to both judge and empathise, and the problem of social inequality. In short, these first sentences suggest that this novel is going to be one of substance, and do so without pomposity. This suggestion is conveyed by the measured voice of a sympathetic narrator.

 

Read the full post on Writers Victoria.

 

Self Editing for Fiction #9 ~ Sophistication

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This post by Stef Mcdaid originally appeared on WriteIntoPrint in October of 2014.

Sliding off of his bunk, Richard slipped on a dirty T-shirt that lay on the floor and hastily acquired a fresh pair of boxer shorts from his bedside table before circumnavigating the accumulated piles of junk strewn all over his bedroom floor to find out who the f*ck was bothering him at this ungodly hour. Ricky was not the tidiest of people, and certainly not a morning person.
As he looked at his Rolex Cosmograph Daytona wristwatch, he went into the kitchen and splashed some water over his pounding head. If only that f*cking jerk would stop ringing the doorbell! he thought.

This passage I cobbled together contains quite a few style sins. I will list them in order.

 

‘as’ and ‘-ing’ constructions: starting too many sentences with these is nowadays regarded as hack writing by some industry professionals – plus, the simultaneity they sometimes suggest makes many of them technically impossible. In the first sentence Richard dons a T-shirt and rummages in his bedside table *at the same time* as he slides off his bunk. Similarly, in the second paragraph he’s looking at his wristwatch all the while he’s going to the kitchen and splashing water over his head. There are, of course, instances where they are suitable, but be careful not to overdo their use, and look out for simultaneity paradoxes.

 

Word order:

 

Read the full post on Write Into Print.

 

Never Say Never: Taking a Closer Look at Writing “Rules”

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This post by Amy Knupp originally appeared on The How To Write Shop on 10/2/13.

Don’t kill a puppy. Never use an –ly adverb. Exclamation points are the mark of an amateur.

I’ve heard these writing “rules” and dozens of others from the time I started pursuing publication. And I’m ashamed to say, when I was new, I even believed some of them.

The fact is, writing is an art, and in art forms, there are no absolutes. But when we’re new and hungry for success and validation, it’s amazing the things we take to heart.

Mention the mere word “rules” in any group of writers, and you’re bound to start an animated, opinionated conversation. And the thing is, there are reasons most of these “rules” have been circulated for so long. Usually pretty valid reasons.

As the cliché goes, you need to know what the “rules” are and understand why they’ve been perpetuated. Then…then you can break them.

 

Read the full post on The How To Write Shop.