Writing Tips

Dull Words and Phrases

• Join Team Boring and Defeat the British (Again)
• Green Cherries in the Fruitcake
• Duis Nunc Asylum per Populi dis Plurali (Sequi)
• Assum Lacaenae te dis Consolari

After much pondering and many long discussions with my wife, I have decided to jump into the race for President of the United States 2028. I know it's a little early, and the campaign will be arduous, but I have been preparing myself for a long while, practicing the victory sign with both hands at the same time.

This Fourth of July, I wanted to do something different, so I exhumed three of our Forefathers for a beer.

In Congress, July 4, 1776.

I have been asked a lot of questions about words, writing, and grammar, but by far the most-asked question I have ever received is: How did people in the South start saying y’all? And why is the word used to refer to only one person? And what is the plural of y’all?

A quick Internet search will tell you what to put in a letter of recommendation; but it is just as important to know what to leave out. Using certain words, phrases, and information might cause your reader not to admit your student or hire your former employee. These are the most important to avoid:

WordRake has helped professionals remove 1,994,958,346,719 useless words, which we have collected and saved. As we pass the two-trillion mark, we will now reverse the WordRake engine and redistribute all of those useless words to those who need them most: the American Student.

Like so many of life’s lessons, the ones we learn the hardest are the ones we learn the best. Take my wife (no pun here), who remembers so vividly making a mistake on a paper in graduate school over twenty-five years ago that she could go straight to a box in our garage and resurrect that paper with her professor’s edits. I hold it in my hand. She had written, “Like a brave warrior readies himself for battle, the tree and Christ become the image of horse and rider.” And, “The Cross tells the dreamer that it has been chosen and honored above all others in the wood, like Mary is honored over all other women.” In both sentences, her professor had crossed out like and replaced it with as. The rest of the pages lie virtually untouched. She still laments that mistake, because she cares about her writing. That’s why I have her edit mine.

If you have been sane far too long, and you miss the old days of total insanity, ponder why the Oxford American Dictionary would approve this sentence:

Take today’s Tip and about $7.95 plus tax to your local Starbucks to get one grande-double-hazelnut-caramel-combo-non-fat-extra-foam macchiato, absolutely free. Then take your grande-double-hazelnut-caramel-combo-non-fat-extra-foam-absolutely-free macchiato outside and listen for the sound of geese overhead. (Geese on the street or the parking lot behind the Starbucks will not work for this opportunity to show everyone how smart you are; the geese must be in the air.) Also, make sure you see a whole bunch of geese, not just one devoted couple. In Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and the Carolinas, maybe Virginia, pelicans will do.