Choose your style wisely.

Use your words wisely was something that my grandfather always taught me when I got myself into an argument or sticky situation. He would always tell me about instances in his life where he would say something and mean something else. He said it caused him a lot of problems in his life. So as I read through chapter 9, I just had feelings of all the things that he had said to me. I don’t have that great of a vocabulary, I try to stay away from big words with big meanings because I have a fear that someone may ask me what the word means. I think this chapter does a great job about teaching us about wordiness and cleaning up our writing. Just as we love to hear ourselves talk, I think we have that same issue with writing as well. Sometimes we use words that aren’t necessary but we use them anyway because it may make us look good. The examples on page 131 was like a list of all the things that I do wrong and it made me feel bad for my editors that had to put up with that stuff issue after issue.

I really like how chapter 11 defines style because I have never really thought about what it means to others. The book’s definition is that style is a writer’s unique vision. I don’t think there are two people that have the same style in their writing even though they may have the same ideas. Each person wants to portray the story differently and put their stamp on that piece. Using intensifiers sparingly is something that I struggle with a lot, because I have fallen in love with really, extremely, and truly too many times. As I continued with that section, it really helped me realize that is something that I need to eliminate from my writing.

Mistake this week:

I found this while searching through my Facebook the other day. It is a word that I have misspelled my fair share of times.