How To Write Good

Since my motto is Words Matter, I found myself researching how to write good.

OK, that’s intentionally a bit provocative and some background is warranted. A friend used the phrase “Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement” so I obviously wanted to know where it originated.

It’s generally attributed to Frank L. Visco from an article entitled “How To Write Good” in the June 1986 issue of Writers’ Digest. However, their online archive doesn’t go back that far and I couldn’t find a physical copy. I messaged Frank on LinkedIn – or at least someone I thought might be the author. Bingo!

Frank confirmed he was the author and sent me a photo of a framed print.

The full set of 23 rules is as follows:

1. Avoid Alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

I’m guilty of several many of these. How about you?

Amusingly, he also sent me another 13 rules entitled “12 Ways To Write Even Gooder”. Those additional rules:

1. Speaking of homonyms, avoid non sequiturs.
2. A polysyllabic vocabulary is unnecessary.
3. Don’t verb nouns.
4. You can’t be too ambiguous.
5. Beware of typographical eras.
6. Don’t use non-existent words, irregardless.
7. Emulate common parlance.
8. BE CONSISTENT!!!
9. But without sentence fragments.
10.  . . . don’t changes sources in midstream-of-consciousness . . .
11. Statistics are 100% useless.
12. There are exceptions to every rule, except this one.
13. Don’t overdeliver.

Following these two sets of rules may not help you write good but at least it will probably cause your readers to laugh.

Right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯