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Times' Style Guide Suggests Writers Avoid Clichés Like the Plague
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Isn't this from an Internet chain letter:
How to write good by Frank L. Visco
* Avoid alliteration. Always.
* Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
* Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
* Employ the vernacular.
* Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
* Contractions aren't necessary.
* Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
* One should never generalize.
* Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
* Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
* Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
* Profanity sucks.
* Be more or less specific.
* Understatement is always best.
* Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
* One-word sentences? Eliminate.
* Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
* The passive voice is to be avoided.
* Who needs rhetorical questions?Posted 3 years ago #
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