Writing Tips |
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I thought I was a good writer. That illusion dissolved after I received my first edited manuscript to review back in 2007, I was guilty of typical amateurish writing mistakes. I used passive voice too much, used the word that way too much, used too many adjectives ending in ly, wrote sentences that were too long, over-used italics, quotation marks, semi-colons and exclamation points, and generally wrote too much on a given point or subject. I had to learn to cut and gut. If you can eliminate a sentence from a paragraph without losing or changing the meaning, you didn't need that sentence. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. William Strunk, Jr. The Elements of Style, 1918 A useful link for writers is thewritersfriend.net. For more writing tips and related editing information, go to the Editing page. You are on the Writing Tips page. Updated December 9, 2024 |