- Do not use contractions.
- Do not write in the second person.
- If you begin a paragraph with a number, you must write out the number.
- The period goes inside the quotation marks (in America).
- The full stop goes outside the quotation marks (in the United Kingdom).
- Put a comma before a quotation mark if you're quoting someone, but not if you're using quotes to signify a theory, conjecture, or the name of a magazine, newspaper, or academic paper.
- Never curse.
- Do not use the following words: that, actually, get, got, great deal, big, small, really, very, or any sort of abbreviation.
- Everyday is an adjective. Every day is an adjective (every) describing a noun (day) See also: Maybe/May be, awhile/a while.
Ok, I'll cut myself off. You get the point. (I just broke rule #2.)
My issue with these never-ending rules is they erode our personalities in writing. Young children enter school as rough diamonds and exit college thoroughly polished to the point they all look the same. Then, we stick them under a microscope to look for flaws. That's why "grammar Nazis" exist and we have an ingrained fear of misspelling anything on a cover letter, resume, or, god forbid, Facebook. Life should not be a non-stop English exam.
I recently received an email from a friend of a friend who is looking to come work in Sihanoukville. He's a lovely chap (as Lee would say), and he sent the most professional email I've seen in six years. I replied, "Whoa. Calm down, Dwight Schrute. This isn't that kind of place."
Over the last few years, I've noticed job descriptions want candidates to have "strong" and "unique" voices in their writing. Some ask for a sense of humor, and others simply want applicants to "tell us about yourself."
Tangent: interviewers who say, "So, tell me about yourself," is a very bad, inexperienced interviewer. Just walk out immediately.
How do we do this without 1) sounding like a machine or 2) sounding like a maniac?
The answer is language and anecdotes.
Language
This is where reading books helps. Granted, I found myself speaking like a Game of Thrones character after powering through all five books in a month, so have self-awareness and reign-in the flowery language according to your audience.
I can't quote the article or time period, but at one point in my adult life I read a study saying women talk more than men because they have more expansive vocabularies. It's analogous to talented rappers. If they know more words, they're cleverer in their writing. It's easier to convey exactly what you're thinking if you know the right word to use.
Here's a basic example:
He was really mean in that article.
That sentence isn't descriptive and you may be asked to elaborate.
His tone was caustic which alienated the readers.
See? He wasn't necessarily "mean" like he pulled your hair and pushed you in the dirt. Improving your vocabulary helps with specificity and shines a light on the opinion you want conveyed.
(Note: I had to Google the word "caustic" when my dad used it to describe my tone in an email. I didn't read it in a book.)
Additional tip: don't refer to yourself. Just state something as fact so you don't create a passive statement with phrases like "In my opinion" or "I feel like." Quite frankly, there's no reason why anyone should care about my or your opinion, and beginning a sentence with a personal sentiment detracts from the real point. Writing in the third person shouldn't take away your voice. If anything, it will make it more authoritative.
I was sad to see her go.
Vs.
It's difficult to cope when a friend moves away.
Anecdotes
Storytelling is the most effective way to engage someone in both writing and conversation. The only rules here are it must be 1) pertinent to the subject, 2) have a clear beginning, middle, and end, and 3) if you need to end it with, "and then I found $5" to make it more interesting, then just keep it to yourself.
This is a bad anecdote:
I worked in a museum for five years.
This is a good anecdote:
I was the "dinosaur lady" at the museum for five years. Children would recognize me on the street and ask for a selfie.
Not only does it tell people how long you worked at the museum, it insinuates you were good at your job because children remembered you and thought of you as a celebrity.
I created a filing system.
Blah blah blah
I introduced Microsoft Access to the office, which my supervisor implemented company-wide.
If you must talk about something boring, at least turn it into an accomplishment.
I went to Thailand.
Bangkok is the most visited city in the world. This is a non-story.
How do we do this without 1) sounding like a machine or 2) sounding like a maniac?
The answer is language and anecdotes.
Language
This is where reading books helps. Granted, I found myself speaking like a Game of Thrones character after powering through all five books in a month, so have self-awareness and reign-in the flowery language according to your audience.
I can't quote the article or time period, but at one point in my adult life I read a study saying women talk more than men because they have more expansive vocabularies. It's analogous to talented rappers. If they know more words, they're cleverer in their writing. It's easier to convey exactly what you're thinking if you know the right word to use.
Here's a basic example:
He was really mean in that article.
That sentence isn't descriptive and you may be asked to elaborate.
His tone was caustic which alienated the readers.
See? He wasn't necessarily "mean" like he pulled your hair and pushed you in the dirt. Improving your vocabulary helps with specificity and shines a light on the opinion you want conveyed.
(Note: I had to Google the word "caustic" when my dad used it to describe my tone in an email. I didn't read it in a book.)
Additional tip: don't refer to yourself. Just state something as fact so you don't create a passive statement with phrases like "In my opinion" or "I feel like." Quite frankly, there's no reason why anyone should care about my or your opinion, and beginning a sentence with a personal sentiment detracts from the real point. Writing in the third person shouldn't take away your voice. If anything, it will make it more authoritative.
I was sad to see her go.
Vs.
It's difficult to cope when a friend moves away.
Anecdotes
Storytelling is the most effective way to engage someone in both writing and conversation. The only rules here are it must be 1) pertinent to the subject, 2) have a clear beginning, middle, and end, and 3) if you need to end it with, "and then I found $5" to make it more interesting, then just keep it to yourself.
This is a bad anecdote:
I worked in a museum for five years.
This is a good anecdote:
I was the "dinosaur lady" at the museum for five years. Children would recognize me on the street and ask for a selfie.
Not only does it tell people how long you worked at the museum, it insinuates you were good at your job because children remembered you and thought of you as a celebrity.
I created a filing system.
Blah blah blah
I introduced Microsoft Access to the office, which my supervisor implemented company-wide.
If you must talk about something boring, at least turn it into an accomplishment.
I went to Thailand.
Bangkok is the most visited city in the world. This is a non-story.
We went to Soi Cowboy in Bangkok and saw a ping pong show. I thought it was a ping pong tournament, but it was definitely not.
Now this story is going somewhere. I can't write the rest of it, because it belongs to Lee and is horrendously inappropriate and shouldn't exist anywhere on the internet.
-----------
Look, I haven't made it my life's mission to fix the entire internet's writing. I'm not Ira Glass, who delivers his words like he's been planning to say them since he spawned onto our planet. However, I'm a decent writer who has received at least one compliment from a non-relative who had no reason to flatter me.
Finally, I have the urge to tell you why this post even materialized. I'm a big Pinterest user (or "pinner" to use the appropriate lingo). There is a surprising number of fan fiction blurbs about celebrities like One Direction, Tom Hiddleston, Benedict Cumberbatch, and other men who can make a young lady's (or man's) heart palpatate with a low-res black and white photo. Obviously, I googled more fan fiction. Some have chapters -- CHAPTERS! I had never read fan fiction until two weeks ago, and it opened up a new world, I soon realized, I don't like.
Here's why:
It's impossible to thoughtfully write about a real human being you don't actually know. If that human being is a celebrity, then you're writing about your personal perception of a person which could be different than someone else's, and open yourself to a lot of criticism. It's one thing to declare your love at the top of your lungs from a mountain top, but the mountain doesn't yell back with the ferocity of teen Twitter.
You have a story. You have pieced together, arguably, a work of literature that is sentimental and creative. It's easy to turn yourself into the protagonist and find the right language to convey your perspective because you're writing about the one subject in the world you know everything about. Keep that story, but replace the celebrity with your own character who you know inside and out. The greatest part of making something up is you can eschew trite, non-descriptive language that keeps you safe from being wrong because you, simply, cannot be wrong.
Instead of describing how Harry Styles was "clearly emotional when he walked his daughter down the aisle," maybe create Jonathan who...
YEAH. I can turn on the cheese. Maybe I should write fan fiction....watched Stella affix her grandmother's veil to her hair, which she wore unstyled with her brown curls falling over her shoulders like a blanket -- a trait she inherited from Jonathan. She had spent her teenage years battling her hair with chemicals and a straightening iron, so for just a split-second, his heart jumped, pushing out all of the regrets and fears he had collected for the last twenty-eight years. His eyes welled-up as she turned from the mirror to face him, smiled her mother's smile, and shrugged as she took her bouquet from the vase and looped her arm under his. She asked, "Ready?"
