Writing isn't about choosing the most intelligent-sounding words, the most colorful adjectives or even sharing the most profound ideas-it's about getting people's attention.
Praised authors and writers from every decade (and Century, if you want to get technical) have had their own constitutions about the technique of writing. Below are some of the biggest tips and words of advice that have helped me develop not only my skills as a writer, but my voice as a speaker.
1. Journalist Paula LaRocque refers to "fadspeak" when describing what she considers the worst form of clich writing. Fadspeak is essentially TV language or clickish, fad slogans or words. LaRocque explains that published writing must bring fresh vocabulary and journalists should learn substitutions to trite language. To me, fadspeak is growing because of the Internet and Internet sub cultures that revolve around writtenor typedlanguage. This generation communicates through the Internet and even younger generations are responsible for creating a vast database of fadspeak, some of which permeates into mainstream journalism, some of which remains encrypted among the different sub cultures that exist throughout the World Wide Web.
Nonetheless, there are certain examples of fadspeak that LaRocque suggests being avoided like spam. "Get a life;" "get over it;" "I'm outta here" and "what's up wi' dat?" are some of LaRocque's examples, but anyone with access to a computer and the address to a chat room can see that these phrases are obsolete in the Technology Age. In an addition, I would reference NoSlang.com, an Internet database of the most commonly used Internet phrases. The purpose of the site is to assign acronyms to phrases that are so common in communication that they reserve their own three or four letter acronym. Some examples are: "Bring your own beer," "what the f*?," "later," "rocks" or "make it snappy."
2. LaRocque's chapter, "Language myths hinder graceful writing," is probably causing rigid mechanical instructors to have nightmares about the improper use of infinitives. I have to agree with the writing coach, who basically proves that meticulous mechanics lose meaning in writing. The phrase "Me and LaRocque both try to teach you proper grammar and pronoun use" both looks bad on paper and sounds bad to the trained ear. "Me" is the incorrect pronoun for the compound subject, signaled by the verb, "try," which is solidified by the squiggly green line in Microsoft Word that tells you "me" should
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