“So many English teachers shoved complex sentences down my throat that now a simple sentence almost makes my skin crawl.”
That’s Tim Biden, during a Twitter conversation about writing for the web.
He was responding to a tweet Rough Draft host Demian Farnworth shared with a link to his first Copyblogger post: “The Disgustingly Simple Rule for Web Writing That’s Often Hard to Swallow.�
Tim retweeted the link and said, “I hate that he’s right.�
Clueless, as usual, about anything not immediately in front of him, Demian asked, “Why you hate?�
Then Tim dropped that heavy-weight comment above.
Demian responded with: “I was fortunate to skip most of school as a lad so as not to be brainwashed. But I didn’t learn how to write either.�
In fact, it wasn’t until Demian went back to college in his late twenties that he learned how to write. His last year in school, he even won an essay contest.
That is a major achievement for a guy who equated good writing with jungle juice and obscure poetry. See, the thing is, Demian had to learn the rules.
Eventually. Particularly this rule about clarity …
In this 6-minute episode of Rough Draft, host Demian Farnworth discusses:
- A beautiful Stanley Fish quote about clarity
- The single greatest reason most of us are afraid of writing
- All you need to write clear sentences
Rough Draft on iTunes
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