English Skills Week 5 Reading - An Approach to Style
Style
The sound words make on paper, all writers reveal something of their spirits, habits, capacities and biases through their writing.
Place yourself in the background
Write in a way which draws the reader's attention to the sense and substance of the writing, rather than to the mood and temper of the author
Write in a way that comes naturally
Use words and phrases that come readily to hand
Never imitate consciously, but do not worry about imitating - after all this is how we learn to speak
Write with nouns and verbs
Work from a suitable design
You will need at least a rough scheme
Sometimes impulse and emotion are more compelling than design
Not with adjectives and adverbs
Nouns and verbs give good writing its toughness and colour
Revise and rewrite
Do not overwrite
Reread your writing and delete the excess
Do not overstate
Lose your credibility this way
Superlatives need to be used very carefully
Avoid use of qualifiers
Rather/very/little/pretty
Do not affect a breezy manner
Breezy style comes of egocentric - thinking everything that comes to mind is of interest to everyone
Use orthodox spelling
DO NOT use nite for night, thru for through etc.
Do not explain too much
Do not construct awkward adverbs
adding -ly to something doesn't make it a good adverb
Make sure the reader knows who is speaking in dialogue
Avoid fancy words
Do not use dialect unless your ear is good
Be clear
Avoid injecting opinions