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Use your characters. What are their lives like? Working plumbing? Toilet paper? Are the streets safe? You can use dialogue rather than prose. "What do you mean there was no milk at the store? They...
It's not humorous, but look into Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals. I distinctly remember, in at least one English edit I read for college ethics, a single sentence which went...
You could always elide the worst bits because the characters themselves find them too horrible to dwell on. "Honey... did they?" She nodded slowly, a tear trickling down her cheek. The ad...
I think the problem is less style itself than the fact that your readers are taking your writing style as indicative of a problematic attitude. Let's take the sentences you highlighted and the sug...
I'm not at all sure what you mean with "a perverse pit of debauchery". Apocalyptic Mad Max/Dark Angel, or what a school teacher from 1850 would say about the sexual habits of millennials–or pretty ...
Some of this might sound cliche, but it's what I often cling to when I'm feeling insecure about letting anyone look at something I'm working on. That being said, even experienced writers often have...
There are a few relevant factors: Use diagrams when they add value I see plenty of formal writing that includes diagrams -- technical flow diagrams, trend graphs, timelines, resource-allocation c...
The only issue I have with it is that it sounds bookish — it's a narrative device. So if your character is telling this story to the reader, even if it's in the present, you'd be okay. You can part...
Is it a good idea to try and make my readers feel attached to the character's home in order to increase the emotion of the moment? This depends on the story. Why do you want to increase the em...
You're probably too close to the scene to tell. My suggestions: 1) Write the scene with whatever dialogue you think is necessary. Put it in a drawer and don't look at it for at least a month. Then...
I think it entirely depends upon the pacing you require from the scene. If you're writing it with the action in mind, I would have around a single line of dialogue for every action that takes plac...
Difficult concept and varies with style guide. In general, 1) It Is appropriate to capitalize the first word of a full sentence within a quote (motto s have different rules). 2) All versions of T...
The clarifier you want is "respectively." It's fine in running copy, or even as a caption, but clunks as a header. Comparison of egocentric camera against static camera and dense sensor placem...
The main way to make magic "not annoying" it to make sure it follows the rules of magical physics, if you will. Magical acts require energy (fuel). The energy has to come from somewhere to be exp...
If the technical terms are important for the rest of the plot, you might be able to explain them in the narration as the acts unfold. (A said to B, "I'm hacking the mainframe." A entered a command ...
Block D You capitalize proper names. The reason 'Block' is capitalized is because you are referring to a specific block. 'The block' would not be capitalized, because - while you are referring to ...
You would say 'Block D' when referring to a place.
Underlines are only used to indicate hyperlinks; they should not be used for emphasis. When you have a block of italicized text, and you have a phrase which would normally be italicized in book o...
Arguably, one could say that the pronunciation of such a string is ambiguous. Would someone say it "em five five slash nine eight seven dot three" or "em fifty-five nine eighty-seven point three" o...
In fiction, there's no rule for this, only differing styles and opinions. However, some editors seem to like using the Chicago Manual of Style's alternative rule for this. 9.3 An alternative r...
Side note: This problem isn't limited to computer jargon. There are many stories where the characters discuss things that all the characters would know or understand but a reader would not necessar...
Lyrical refers to song-like qualities. Songs are inherently emotive and use rhythm and sound to convey a sense beyond the literal. The rhythmic aspect includes not merely higher-level structure but...
A factor that has not been mentioned yet is the difference between material that is meant to be read vs. material that is written to be scanned. Narrative works such as novels and histories are wri...
I just pulled a random selection of books off my shelf, US and European publishers, and almost all use indented paragraphs, although I am told that this is less common in Germany. Apart from the sa...
It's not related to academic vs non-academic styles, but a mere matter of proper typography and cost-effectiveness. Butterick's Practical Typography offers the generally accepted rule: A first...
