Get Me Rewrite: A few of my favorite peeves
By Gretchen Reynolds, "Phys Ed" columnist for The New York Times and author of The New York Times bestseller "The First 20 Minutes"
(Julie Andrews voice …) These are a few of my favorite peeves:
1. Danglers
“Cycling along the bike path, Soldier Field is wreathed in mist.”
Dangling your modifiers before unsuspecting readers is ungrammatical, impolite and puzzling. Stadiums can pedal now? I always re-read my sentences and refine their subjects, if needed. “Cycling along the bike path, we saw Soldier Field wreathed in mist.”
2. It
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
It is so easy to start sentences with “It is.” I do it. Then I rewrite. Who or what is ‘it,’ apart from an evil clown? Kill this phrase with grammar check.
3. sticKy CaPs
“the Greatest Witch hunt in History”
This tic migrated from Twitter and other social media. It should be killed with fire. Capitalize proper nouns, such as Twitter, but not words you wish to emphasize.
4. Trendy clichés
“It should be killed with fire.”
Certain phrases work well — the first thousand or so times they appear. Then they become very lazy and dated, e.g., (Celebrity voice …); see above.
5. Very superfluous
“Then they become very lazy and dated.”
My father, also a writer, once told me to substitute ‘damn’ for ‘very’ anytime I wrote the latter; re-read the sentence; see how silly it sounded; and remove the useless qualifier. Damn satisfying.
Read Gretchen's most recent Phys Ed article
Next time you need some sharp words written, send a note. Melissa@MHarris.com.
Was it a lazy, stormy night when we hunted with fire in the stadium?
Wreathed in mist,was the Soldier Field,as we cycled along the bike path...