

Writing Rules: Advice From The Times on Writing Well - 001sky
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/writing-rules-advice-from-the-new-york-times-on-writing-well/

======
tptacek
_Nouns formed from other parts of speech are called nominalizations. Academics
love them; so do lawyers, bureaucrats and business writers. I call them
“zombie nouns” because they cannibalize active verbs, suck the lifeblood from
adjectives and substitute abstract entities for human beings._

\o/

~~~
dhimes
Another pet peeve of mine is going the other way: making verbs out of other
parts of speech- particularly nouns:

 _We'll impact that as soon as possible._

~~~
mapleoin
Or as Calvin and Hobbes used to say:

 _Verbing weirds language._

------
mattparcher
On the subject of “writing rules”:

The submitted article is titled “Writing Rules! Advice From The Times on
Writing Well”, but (as of this writing) the title appears here on HN as
“Writing Rules Advice From The Times on Writing Well”.

Arguably, the modified title is readable, and largely conveys the meaning of
the original article.

But certainly the run-on converted title is quite different than the source. I
wonder if the HN parser would do well to, instead of simply stripping all
exclamation marks as a matter of principle, at least convert mid-title
exclamations to a hyphen, to indicate the separation within the original
title?

E.g. “Writing Rules – Advice From The Times on Writing Well”

(Even then, “Rules” loses its original implication as an excited verb to
instead become a noun, but this particular confusion may be unavoidable.)

------
ilamont
If only my high school and college teachers had given advice like this.
Instead, we were forced to follow the Edwardian rules of _Strunk & White_ and
teachers generally looked down upon any non-standard form of literature,
including the science fiction I was reading at the time -- books by Wolfe,
Delany, LeGuin and Gibson (this was in the late '80s).

As for the suggestion in the article to follow the voice in your head, I
learned to do this by writing extensive travel journals in the 1990s and
further developed it through blogging.

I also wonder how the introduction of email has impacted writing. I believe
email helped develop my own voice and editing skills -- when I first started
using it in the mid-90s, it probably increased my monthly written output as
much as 10x (I had written letters in longhand before then). It also exposed
me to the written "voices" of friends, colleagues and strangers.

~~~
zwp
> the voice in your head

I recommend "The Writer's Voice" (Alvarez) for more on this.

------
Spearchucker
It's a really good post that speaks to good style. What bleaks me out about an
industry in which syntax permeates everything, is how much we tank at basic
grammar, spelling and vocabulary. And then there're the hipster buzzwords that
makes many cringe -

 _Friend me/text me. On premise. Ping me. Your very clever. That effects me._

Practical advise is out there.

[http://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Blog.aspx?id=4b6816fd-
ca1d-4e46-...](http://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Blog.aspx?id=4b6816fd-
ca1d-4e46-9c8b-729dff3b41ab)

<http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/free-guides.html>

~~~
majormajor
One day we could have "compilers" to catch most your/you're,
their/there/they're, effect/affect errors, but then what about the dynamic
typists!?

Though I don't have any problem with new short phrases like "text me" or even
"friend me" (though I'm not sure just how long that one will hang around since
it seems rather FB-specific). "Calling" wasn't always something you did with a
phone, after all. And "send me a text message" sounds so stiff compared to
going from "call me" to "text me." So I don't think you'll be able to effect
change there.

~~~
lazerwalker
The verb "calling" is a great example of how new meanings can overtake old
ones to the point that what used to sound faddish and trendy becomes normal
and accepted. "Calling" was a thing you did prior to the telephone, but you
wouldn't just "call someone". You'd call _on_ someone, or make a call, both of
which now sound relatively formal and stiff.

------
6ren
I really like extended metaphors. When done well, they tell you more about
something, in terms of what you already know. They can also be affecting (a
pedagogically oft-quoted example:
<http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171781>).

Another technique is _reviving a dead metaphor_ , in which you extend a
metaphor which has become a cliche, abstracted from its original concrete
meaning. Like the word "dead".

Both these techniques can be used as cheesy special effects, but when used
well, they affect you without they themselves being noticed.

------
elliptic
I believe the title should be: From the Times, Advice on Writing Well

~~~
cpeterso
Yes. I misread the original title as meaning "advice from the Times of Writing
Well, when writing well still meant something." :)

