Writing With Style

I have always been interested in style, whether it is in song lyrics, textbooks, novels or other written material. I am glad we had the opportunity this week to learn about writing with style. I found it interesting how free you are as a writer to break the rules. The text even mentions considering fragments and run-ons. If you know what you are doing and it works, then why not? If you are going to break such a rule it is important that you make sure it works, otherwise your writing strength will suffer instead of improve.

There are other ways to create style in your writing as well. I liked the part of the text that talked about playing with words. That section explains how creating words can add to your style. It is also a good idea to make sure you use proper words. For example, instead of writing, “talk a lot” you could write, “jabber”, “yammer”, or “chatter”. It is also a good idea to vary the length of your sentences. When every sentence is short, it can make the writing seem dull and choppy. The risk of using many long sentences is that it can cause the audience to lose interest.

Moving along to grammatical errors, I love the made-up word “irregardless”. It is a word that simply could not exist. I didn’t see it written anywhere but I have a friend who uses it liberally even though he knows it’s wrong. It goes to show that breaking rules can add style to speech as well as writing.