Writing
and how to shun them
1. Grammar Gaffes
1. Dangling Participles
– Straining toward the finish line, the race was
finally over. I was the winner.
– Straining toward the finish line, I won.
2. Passive Voice
– An important lesson was learned that day.
– Felix the Cat learned his lesson that day.
3. Punctuation and Quotations
– Periods & commas always inside. Hush.
1. Grammar Gaffes
4. Past tense vs. past perfect
– Past perfect = “past of the past”
– He had studied hard all week, but he still failed.
– Why didn’t they understand? We had reviewed it a
dozen times.
– Introducing flashbacks:
• I had seen this type of thing before. One night in
1946, a stocky fellow with a suspicious-looking
beard had darted into my office, claiming to be
the deposed king of Cleveland. I went out to get
him the glass of water he asked for, and when I
returned, all my CHEEZ-ITs were gone.
1. Grammar Gaffes
5. Subjunctive mood
– WRONG: If I was you, I’d leave town.
– RIGHT: If I were a butterfly, I’d thank You,
Lord, for givin’ me wings!
– I wish he were somewhere else.
• Sometimes these mistakes are excusable
informally, but “If I were” is pretty much
required.
1. Grammar Gaffes
6. Transitive vs. intransitive verbs
– With hard work, I prevailed the challenge.
– Transitives have a D.O.; intransitives don’t.
– Depends on knowledge of verbs: READ!
2. Showing
• Don’t explain that it was scary; make me
see, hear, and feel how scary it was and
conclude for myself that it was scary.
• Statements telling me it’s scary:
– Fear flooded my mind. I was terrified. I descended
into a vortex of unimaginable fear. I had never been
so scared in my life.
• Evidence of how scary it was:
– My palms were slick with sweat. Ragged breaths
burned in my lungs. The bobcat’s claws snagged my
belt loop, and for a moment, I gazed at Death.
2. Showing
• Furthermore, don’t just tell me something
important happened. Make it happen again.
• Telling:
– At the first practice, Coach Francois made us do
suicides until we puked.
2. Showing
• Showing:
When I arrived at the first practice, Coach Francois was
looking at his watch.
“You are late, mon ami,” he growled. “Stand at zee
baseline with zee others. Zees is called a suicide
sprint. Free throw line and back. Halfcourt and back.
Full court. Back. Oui? Now go!”
By the second leg of the sprint, I was having
nightmarish visions of the funnel cake I’d eaten
before practice. By the third leg, I was tripping over
it. Peeling myself up off the gym floor, I stumbled
toward the water fountain and grimly admitted that I
might not be the first-string point guard.
3. Baby-isms
• Infinite Adverbs
– I was so scared. How scared?
– It was such a ripoff. How much is “such”?
– “So” and “such” need a “that” clause to
ground them in reality
– so scared that I messed my pants; so lonely [that] I
could die; such a disaster that I vowed never to return
• Exclamation Points, Italics, and CAPS
– It was a girl! She was SO CUTE. I adored her!
– A cheap shortcut to genuine emotion. If you need to
dress it up with formatting, your writing is failing.
3. Baby-isms
• “Woulden” Writing
– The conditional tense (“would”) is used for
contrary-to-fact statements, not repeated
actions.
• Every morning he would go to the junkyard and
bench-press a cement truck.
– Did he do it? Then say so!
• Every morning he went to the junkyard and bench-
pressed a cement truck.
4. Other Culprits
• Clichés
– They’re shortcuts; don’t cut corners
– If it’s been said before, ditch it
– Avoid clichéd exaggeration
• Badminton is my life. Dance is where my
heart is. I live to sing.
• Clutter
– Unnecessary words, unnecessarily long
words, unnecessarily complex phrasings
– Excess “To be”s
– Excess prepositional phrases