Posts tagged style
Recently, I have stumbled upon a problem. After releasing an issue, I think that I failed to earn the trust of my readers. My analysis is that they did not have enough faith in me to make the "righ...
I'm compiling in-world legends for my built world, and would like them to feel like established legends from our own human experience. What should I keep in mind while writing these legends? What...
I've written a book. My question is if it is in bad {taste, karma, policy} to use an analogy that is disrupting to the reader's stream of consciousness. The quote in question is this: Like a b...
Many recommend the Hemingway app, which pushes simplicity and the lowest possible reading level. Where I live, an illiterate person is defined as any person who reads below a grade nine level. The ...
This is inspired by a few things that have been breaking my immersion when reading Worm. The main protagonist is a teen, and most chapters are first-person POV, so grammatical casualness fits. I ...
I am trying to create documentation for an application, and it's for end users who use keyboard (not mouse) and a screen reader. Some of our conventions require us to always use the full phrase ...
I'm reading Wired for Story, by Lisa Cron, where she writes the following about being vague or omitting information that the reader does not know: ...being vague is never a good idea... .....
There is something I find myself doing often while writing, and I don't even know what to call it, but I would like to know if its good practice. It happens when I'm writing from a third-person per...
I couldn't find anything on this one, so maybe someone has a good idea on what would be considered good practice in a scholarly context. Background For a semester project, I have to observe an on...
In the writing practises guides, it is usually mentioned that use of ellipsis is a bad practice. But I have come across certain usages in professional writing. To give an example; In the novel ...
I recently noticed a trend to a few of my questions. I am attracted to writing in places with extreme brevity. This makes sense to me on a personal level. I've always been attracted to one-liners a...
A lot of people use Google's n-gram to see if something is idiomatic, but for a lot of non-native English speakers even that doesn't really help, so what would you suggest non-native speakers to do...
I am writing a story these days and I want to introduce a character who is similar to a king. This character is introduced with heavy announcements by his minions who scream out words of admiration...
I just had this sentence off my head: A crown of fire spread through the country consuming everything on its way. What I mean by empty metaphor is a metaphor that doesn't really have any me...
Recently, I started writing articles about different subjects I learn on my own (programming, logic ...etc). While writing, I have this tendency to overexplain, I know that readers are smart, but ...
I would like to write a Shakespearean poem that reads and sounds like a poem written during that time period. However, I don't know where I can find an exhaustive list of words that were used durin...
There is a writing technique where a writer would imagine in her mind's eye where her story should end and will write it 'backwards'. Writing the end and then writing the chapters leading to end, s...
Long story short: I default to simple words like "Said" in dialogue much too often. I'm hesitant to abuse the thesaurus due to advice I've been given, as well. Slightly longer version: When I'm wr...
I heard from someone that in English, sentences with a long subject are considered confusing and hard to read. Is it true? An example for such a sentence: ...(Some statements about how mathem...
"The ship sailed through the billowing winds and the petulant waves." Is it redundant? Because, if I say billowing, the reader would probably think petulant waves is too redundant. What do you...
I know that this idea is not totally 'revolutionary' as this type of narration has been used in Breakfast of champions, for example. But, Unlike Vonnegut, I want the 'Narrator talks to the characte...
I have a writing tendency where I get straight to the point, especially when I already have an amazing storyline. The ending goes especially quick. I need to figure out how to move the story along,...
I have been working on a poem for some time now. It is divided into various "Parts" and it will be a long one when completed. Due to the very nature of what I am writing, I just let my thoughts a...
I come from an academic background. Writing has always been an easy thing to me, but almost all of my practice outside of poetry has been in academic writing. I'll find myself writing in the way ...
I am confused about what should I add in the place of conference in the Chicago manual of style? Place of the publisher or the location of the conference? I just want to cite the conference paper...
My previous question was "Are paragraph spacing used for emphasis?" and that got me thinking even deeper about emphasizing. I'd like to emphasize to create tension and make the reader continue rea...
I recently wrote an application to get into a different program for high school. Now I feel like I could have done better with being more formal and get my message across that this program is suita...
At the moment I'm writing my master-thesis in the area of information systems. Because I developed some code to demonstrate my approach, I also mention some software tools in my proof-of-concept se...
I’ve written a few stories now just at home, however I haven’t seemed to crack one thing. I always write in 1st person as I enjoy the intimacy between protagonist and reader, however what if I want...
I have a problem; my natural writing style is very high-brow. It often utilizes complex, flowery language. Much of the time, however, I find that it gives the impression that I am but taking a simp...
I am the editor of a small news blog. I am trying to train my writers to link to their sources. One writer sends me an article without linked sources, so I ask for the sources. They email back res...
If, for example, someone said : "How are you today?", how would you go about "translating" this into sounding like they were talking with a full-mouth? Like, phonetically.
The preface of Introduction to Algorithms mentions that In this, the third edition, we have once again updated the entire book. The changes cover a broad spectrum, including new chapters, revis...
Note: I'm primarily asking this question because while Surtsey, the original asker of the question didn't actually ask a thing (and instead copy-pasted an excerpt of a novel) I believe it's a worth...
I'm not sure whether or not this is standard practice, but I've been taught that between two different-level headings, there shouldn't be any text. For example, the following would not be permitted...
I write what happens to me every day as my diary. I don't write them on paper, but I typeset them in a word-processing system (soft diary), so I can simply edit them and add/remove anything at any ...
As a beginner, I have a frequent problem when writing: I know what I want to write, but I fail to put it in good sentences that reflect my thoughts. Often, this appears in dialogues when I try to ...
The novel I'm writing is third-person limited POV in style. This means that the narration's coverage is limited to what the POV character can observe, think, feel, while others' thoughts, feelings,...
While writing a novel which is a story told of what happened in the past, I am facing two different ways to present information. For an e.g., I can write the story in the following two different ...
I'm having a very hard time finding a list and examples of stylistic subgenre conventions. To be specific: how genre writing impacts things like sentence length, dialogue, the tone of adjectives, ...
I'm editing a short story that's been written in the past tense, however at some points I slip up and use a lot of present tense to describe some scenes. Thing is, it's happened often enough that I...
I won't edit this question, so you can see how much I use it. The current count is 3 times. I've been told that the solution is to revise, revise, revise, but is there a particular strategy for edi...
Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy is when the audience is put off by the incredibly dark nature of a fictional work and won't care what happens next, lose interest or want all the characters to die ...
Good day, I have the following sentence: Nowadays to reach the mass audience, you don't have to rely on traditional media. Instead, you can embrace social networks such as live video strea...
This is a random example but would it be bad if I said something like this when the book is set in a historical setting: “Edwards sword was black and shiny like a brand new car” is it not ok? Shoul...
I hope my question is not off the site's topics. When writing one or two premise sentences for a story, may the premise sentences be in the first POV or third POV, or either POV may be used? Do t...
When writing in 1st person POV, if your story's universe or your main character uses made up values of measurement or doesn't have a term for something like eyeliner or traffic lights, how do you c...
In an academic writing course some years ago I remember being told that when writing, for instance, a journal article in English, one should usually avoid structuring one's text with the help of ex...
I have two sentences: In general, the better the equipment, the higher quality of production you will end up with. We choose our equipment very carefully. To link them together, I have to use t...
