Not a well-structured sentence, I know. This title illustrates today's post topic, however. We look forward to Fridays: end of the week, weekend activities in sight, and discussing the favorite thing we read. For more reading fun on Fridays, pop over to FridayReads on FB (#fridayreads on Twitter).
This week I also stumbled across this quote:
Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"
And don't start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.
~William Safire, "Great Rules of Writing"
Well said. There's a lot to learn from Safire's points and humorous presentation.
How much do spelling mistakes, poor grammar, and punctuation errors turn you off from an otherwise great read?
5 comments:
Oh, I will stop reading something (online or print) in a heartbeat if it has grammatical errors (learn where & when to use apostrophes, bloggers! Tia does this right) or spelling gaffes.
For goodness sakes, if a writer (or purported writer) can't be bothered to give their blog post or magazine article a quick run through the grammar & spellchecker before their own re-read of the piece prior to posting/publication, why should I rely on what they say? What if their facts are also just a little bit off?
Pet peeve = typos in printed books! (Oh, gosh, I hope I don't pull a blooper in my writing any time soon...)
**Katy M
Recommending YA books beyond the bestsellers at http://BooksYALove.blogspot.com
Follow me on Twitter @BooksYALove
I LOVE William Safire!! Fun post, Tia. I confess that I am NOT very good at grammar. I depend on my husband and daughters for that! ;)
My favorite K ladies!
My mom and I found 10 errors in our book after it was printed and we ordered a reprint. Missed by several editors. Made us crazy. Paid extra to fix so we could sleep at night. ;-)
Have a lovely weekend. Your support means the world to me!
It is so, so true: errors found in printed books make you doubt the ability of the author or the truth of what they write. But sometimes those errors are inserted by the editors or typesetters -- accidentally. Still, it does leave a bad impression.
I find it happens a lot with Kobo e-books. I think it has something to do with the conversion process (though I'm still stunned as to how that could be the case with technology today).
Oh, and I had to read and reread Safire's points several times just because they're so witty! Thanks for sharing them. ;-)
Lisa,
Thanks for stopping by. I've read critically acclaimed books with errors, so it is nice to know we are all human.
I can look past a few errors and even odd stylistic choices. But I can't stand inconsistency.
I read a book recently where a character was Mollie for one whole chapter before becoming Molly for the rest of the book. Crazy and confusing.
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