Lesson: Rules for writing Publisher Summary


Set aside time for revising and rewriting–after you’ve written the whole content



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Rules for writing

Set aside time for revising and rewriting–after you’ve written the whole content.


I’m not suggesting that you should edit each time you’ve finished a paragraph–that would just be tedious. What I’m telling is that you should first give yourself some time to finish the content prior to editing. Write away. Don’t edit yet. Don’t focus on the grammar yet. Don’t worry about the syntax, the synonym, the antonym or the order that you’re using.
Write for yourself, but mostly, write for your target audience. Write the message clearly and don’t be afraid to express your thoughts. Don’t censor yourself yet. Let the words flow. Don’t erase what you’ve written yet. Right now, it’s all about expression, about art and about your imagination.
All the editing and the fixing will come later.
If you’ve done even a moment’s research on how to write well, you’ve learned that you should use the active voice instead of the passive voice. It’s solid advice, if you treat it as a guideline. In general, the active voice is more direct and concise. It’s the best choice for most sentences. But there are some things that the passive voice can do better.
For example, sometimes it just isn’t important or helpful to specify who performed the action you’re talking about. Here’s an example where the passive voice is the better choice: This house was built in 1960. Rewriting the sentence in the active voice would not only require you to dig up information you may not have, it would also bog down the sentence with an unnecessary detail. A development company built this house in 1960. Does it really matter who built the house? Probably not, unless someone has specifically asked for that information. 
Adverbs get a bad rap because it’s so easy for writers to rely on them to pad out a sentence full of bland verbs. “Don’t write ran quickly,” goes the classic advice. “Write sprinted instead.” It’s true that sprinted is more precise and interesting than ran quickly. 
But in some cases, a well-chosen adverb is the clearest, most concise way to add detail and dimension to a description. Visualize this scene: I started to ask a question, but she motioned for silence. Now picture this one: I started to ask a question, but she frantically motioned for silence. Different, right? A blanket ban on adverbs removes an important tool from a writer’s toolkit. 
Avoid exclamation points
F. Scott Fitzgerald said that using an exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke. Maybe that’s true in some situations. After all, when you need to make an important point in an essay or you’re trying to add excitement to your novel, you can’t just rely on punctuation marks.
But now that most of our remote communication takes the form of texts, emails, and instant messages, exclamation points have emerged as an important tool for conveying tone. If you want to risk sounding sarcastic, go ahead and write Congratulations on your new job. How wonderful. 
Don’t write in sentence fragments
If you were taught that a sentence fragment is a grammatical error, you’re not alone. But the truth is, sentence fragments are an important technique for creating voice and tone in your writing. 
Not convinced? There are a few of them sprinkled throughout this article. There’s one in this very paragraph, in fact! They help lend a casual, friendly tone to a piece of writing. The trick is to avoid going overboard. Too many fragments will make your writing choppy and confusing. And of course, sentence fragments that show up in the wrong context—say, a term paper or a formal business document—can come across as sloppy or too informal. 
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