eyflfla
Junior Member
I'm not great, but I'm not bad either.
I will proof read your post and give you basic writing tips on how to tighten your language and write clearer. I will try to limit my critique to simple mechanics as much as possible - I don't want to get into a style discussion. You can decide I'm full of crap and I won't harbor any hard feelings. I'm just talking about pointing out little things.
I don't have anyone's permission to use any of the sub par posts I've seen, and any examples I've tried to write so far have gone too far into parody. Someone will just have to take a leap of faith and post something for me to critique.
I think I tend to strip my writing down too much. Irrelevancies are sometimes needed as compositional grease. So don't take every single criticism to heart and you probably don't want to make every single suggested change.
The things I'm going to point out are:
Obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes - There are some who reads over theyre posts at lest once, and someone who don't at all, and the diffrence is quite clearing. I'm sure I've made some errors in this post, but there is a difference between 1-2 per post and 3-4 per paragraph.
Wordiness - If you were to ask me, I would have to say, that people tend to put rather a lot of extra words in their writing because that is the way in which they talk. So, you might look at their post and say 'boy, they wrote up a storm' and then you read it over and you realize that maybe they put in a few too many filler words and not quite enough actual content words and maybe they should scale it down a wee bit and take out some of the extra phrases. Some useless phrases are needed for style and, as mentioned above, compositional grease. A lot of them just get in the way and are as bad as mumbling, er.. um... ah...
Sentence compactness - I tend to overdo this one. Often times you can combine two sentences. If you use punctuation right you can make two sentences into one. If you do this you can drop out a lot of extra filler words. Your post length might be shorter. However your post quality will be much higher. It will be higher because you are conveying information to your reader faster. I think I overdo this one - I'm too good at it. By re-configuring sentence structure and using punctuation correctly you can combine multiple sentences, drop a lot of filler words, and convey meaning more efficiently. Your post length will go down but no one will cry because your quality will have improved.
Active vs Passive - Here's a better breakdown than I could give: Purdue OWL: Active and Passive Voice
That is all I intend to do really, and in that order. I might suggest moving sentences or paragraphs around if there is an obvious better way to do it, but I really will try to leave people's style alone.
Again. Over and over and over. I'm nothing special. However, there are a lot of posters on this site who could use some help with these basic skills and I'm offering it.
Last thing: I won't argue (very long) over any of this. If you disagree with me either you know your shit and we can agree to disagree, or you're too bullheaded to be convinced and I won't waste the keystrokes. Also, there is at least one made up word in this post and some creative use of punctuation. Please don't shave the barber.
I will proof read your post and give you basic writing tips on how to tighten your language and write clearer. I will try to limit my critique to simple mechanics as much as possible - I don't want to get into a style discussion. You can decide I'm full of crap and I won't harbor any hard feelings. I'm just talking about pointing out little things.
I don't have anyone's permission to use any of the sub par posts I've seen, and any examples I've tried to write so far have gone too far into parody. Someone will just have to take a leap of faith and post something for me to critique.
I think I tend to strip my writing down too much. Irrelevancies are sometimes needed as compositional grease. So don't take every single criticism to heart and you probably don't want to make every single suggested change.
The things I'm going to point out are:
Obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes - There are some who reads over theyre posts at lest once, and someone who don't at all, and the diffrence is quite clearing. I'm sure I've made some errors in this post, but there is a difference between 1-2 per post and 3-4 per paragraph.
Wordiness - If you were to ask me, I would have to say, that people tend to put rather a lot of extra words in their writing because that is the way in which they talk. So, you might look at their post and say 'boy, they wrote up a storm' and then you read it over and you realize that maybe they put in a few too many filler words and not quite enough actual content words and maybe they should scale it down a wee bit and take out some of the extra phrases. Some useless phrases are needed for style and, as mentioned above, compositional grease. A lot of them just get in the way and are as bad as mumbling, er.. um... ah...
Sentence compactness - I tend to overdo this one. Often times you can combine two sentences. If you use punctuation right you can make two sentences into one. If you do this you can drop out a lot of extra filler words. Your post length might be shorter. However your post quality will be much higher. It will be higher because you are conveying information to your reader faster. I think I overdo this one - I'm too good at it. By re-configuring sentence structure and using punctuation correctly you can combine multiple sentences, drop a lot of filler words, and convey meaning more efficiently. Your post length will go down but no one will cry because your quality will have improved.
Active vs Passive - Here's a better breakdown than I could give: Purdue OWL: Active and Passive Voice
That is all I intend to do really, and in that order. I might suggest moving sentences or paragraphs around if there is an obvious better way to do it, but I really will try to leave people's style alone.
Again. Over and over and over. I'm nothing special. However, there are a lot of posters on this site who could use some help with these basic skills and I'm offering it.
Last thing: I won't argue (very long) over any of this. If you disagree with me either you know your shit and we can agree to disagree, or you're too bullheaded to be convinced and I won't waste the keystrokes. Also, there is at least one made up word in this post and some creative use of punctuation. Please don't shave the barber.
