Some helpful tips on writing from Fred Reed at fredoneverything.org:
Recently I took part in a discussion of writing and how to do it at Counter-Currents.com. This being a topic of some importance to me, I decided to throw together a few thoughts in a form more coherent that I could do in a podcast. A danger in doing this is that readers will joyfully point out instances in which I have failed to follow my own suggestions. To these sins I confess in advance. Anyway:
This is not a golden age of writing. For one thing, few today have the grasp of English grammar that long ago we had learned by the fifth grade, or any idea why it might be important. Nor, I suspect, have many read much in the best authors in English and so have not acquired an ingrained feel for what is good and what isn’t. I may be wrong. I hope so.
For another, good writing is elitist, and must be. Elitism means a preference for the better to the worse. In an intellectual climate resembling that of an urban bus station, in which the lower cultural orders seek to drag standards to the bottom, few will prefer good writing to bad, or know the difference.
Further, when people are in constant communication via telephones, garbling and semiliteracy are less important than they were when poor communication demanded clarity. In the following we will pretend that it is 1955 and that I am speaking to young who want to write well.
Throughout my years in high school, there was a poster prominently displayed in the main lobby. While I agree with the author as to the deliberate usage of profanity, consideration of the following statement would benefit many today.
“Profanity is the effort of a feeble mind to express itself forcibly”.
English is a construct of the white male patriarchy.
I just LOL! To absurdity and beyond!
Tip of the hat all the Fred Reeds who will follow the Solzhenitsyn lead of not allowing the LIE to enter the world or triumph through them.