Writing Tips Thread

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A few general rules that easily improve writing.

Rule One: Never write POV change's at the head of the text.

For an example.

(FALLOUT-MAN101 POV) / (CurtisLemay POV)

A good writer can make it obvious in their writing who the point of view is coming from, without outright stating it as the author, and constantly telling people who the shifting POV's are for, it is both annoying, and cheap.

If you must tell, that just means that you are mostly either writing from the third person like a history book or foregoing any personality from your characters, to the point that they only exist as cardboard plot dolls and nothing more.

Rule Two: Never use digits in writing as opposed to actually writing numbers.

This is one I often see ignored by newer authors, and it's a minor simple fix that will instantly make your writing seem more mature.

For Example!

"Look Dad! I caught 49 fish today!...But I was stuck fishing at the river from 9 to 5..."

As opposed to.

"Look Dad! I caught Forty-Nine fish today!...But I was stuck fishing at the river from Nine to Five..."

See? One clearly looks, and reads a lot better than the other, despite the sentence's both being identical outside of the the number changes.
 
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Lord Sovereign

Well-known member
A tip I heard once, and I can't for the life of me remember where, is that you should copy the authors you like. Not as in "theme, characters and plot" way, but as in type out their work as practice. Do that consistently and you'll pick up style, tips and tricks in your prose and overall writing. Of course merge it with your own style to not be a complete copy cat.

It's almost like writing lines to grasp spelling better in a way. I'm going to give it a try.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Rule Two: Never use digits in writing as opposed to actually writing numbers.

This is one I often see ignored by newer authors, and it's a minor simple fix that will instantly make your writing seem more mature.

For Example!

"Look Dad! I caught 49 fish today!...But I was stuck fishing at the river from 9 to 5..."

As opposed to.

"Look Dad! I caught Forty-Nine fish today!...But I was stuck fishing at the river from Nine to Five..."

See? One clearly looks, and reads a lot better than the other, despite the sentence's both being identical outside of the the number changes.
That's... not actually the rule. It's quite a bit more complicated.

Outside a starting sentence, digits are always used if there is a decimal point and customarily used anytime there are more than three digits while spelled out numbers are used for less than three digits. Over three digits becomes unwieldy and takes up too much space in print. Numerical amounts that are described in only one-three words, such as "two gross" or "fifty million" are written out as if they had digits as well since they take up a similar amount of space.

Wrong: Funding increased by four point three seven five five two percent in 2015.
Right: Funding increased by 4.37552% in 2015.

Wrong: So much mustard fell, ten million five hundred and six thousand two hundred and eleven kinds!
Right: So much mustard fell, 10,506,211 kinds!

Digits should never be used to start a sentence, those numbers are always spelled out. If the number is unwieldy to write out or has a decimal point, revise the sentence structure to move the number away from the beginning of the sentence.

Wrong: 500 kinds of mustard fell.
Right: Five hundred kinds of mustard fell.

Wrong: 10,506,211 kinds of mustard fell.
Wrong: Ten million five hundred and six thousand two hundred and eleven kinds of mustard fell.
Right: So much mustard fell, 10,506,211 kinds!

Wrong: There are 13 of us.
Right: There are thirteen of us.

You should also switch between digits and spelled words anytime you have two numbers that differentiate between two different types of quantities adjacent to each other to avoid confusion. If they're both unwieldy or have decimal points and you're unable to separate them in the sentence, write the longer one as digits and the shorter as words.

Wrong: There are four twelve year olds. There are 4 12 year olds.
Right: There are 4 twelve year olds. There are four 12 year olds.

Customarily, years are written out and decades are not. This is merely an extension of the rule of three digits and writing words but often bears repeating because people feel that they are different for some reason.

Wrong: It happened in the 50s.
Right: It happened in the fifties.

Wrong: It happened in nineteen-hundred and fifty-two.
Right: It happened in 1952.

Of course in the rare event digits are part of a formal name, they are always used however the name is spelled, much as you don't normally spell the names of the letters in an acronym.

Wrong: The alien agent joined EMJAY-TWELVE.
Right: The alien agent joined MJ-12.

Individual style sheets can vary (this one is somewhat formal) but these are the most common, however the most important thing is being consistent in how you use digits.
 
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Bear Ribs

Well-known member
There are four twelve-year-olds.
Oddly no. Hyphens are their own complicated ruleset but often you hyphenate X-year-old and similar if it is being used before a noun as a modifier, such as eighteen-year-old soldier, but otherwise it is left unhyphenated (the soldier is eighteen years old.)

More sadly, the exact way to use hyphens is even more dependent on the style sheet in use so they have huge heaping piles of exceptions. Some style sheets also include that if digits are hyphenated, you stop spelling the name of the number at two digits (ten and under are spelled, 11 and higher are digitized) but I find that far too nitpicky and tedious to remember. The rules for hyphens also seem to vary more from one style sheet to the other than most English rules do to me.


It's worth discussing style sheets or manuals here since I've brought them up a few times.


Despite what you're taught in high school, English does not actually have hard and fast rules. Rather a given type of writing uses a Style Sheet which is a set of rules governing how punctuation, capitalization, digits, etc. are to be used. What you're taught in school is literally the most common style sheet for school essays but other documents use different rules (Read any Newspaper and you'll notice that all the headlines are sentence fragments, a big no-no for school essays but accepted in papers). The New York Times is somewhat infamous for using a custom style sheet that causes their rules of grammar to be slightly different from all other newspapers or, indeed, any other writing. Legal papers in particular tend to have incredibly dense and complex style sheets which is one reason legalese is so impenetrable to normal readers.

Games and fictional often use special rules for their own custom Style Sheets. For instance in BattleTech, you should italicize the names of 'Mechs but not tanks because (I guess), tanks just aren't special enough. Very few people actually follow that rule because it looks weird and inconsistent to italicize Sentinel and not Vedette, especially when they're in the same paragraph or, worse, sentence together.

It's worth picking out a specific style sheet for your work and sticking with it as it will make your work more consistent and you will have a reference available, rather than looking at various internet sites which will often advise conflicting styles. The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is the most commonly used and recognized for formal writing in the US (not to be confused with user @strunkenwhite, who's tendency to not capitalize formal names is a very uncommon thing in the US).
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
You hyphenate it because it is a phrase being used as a noun.
Only in some specific style sheets (Granted AP style sheet does this and it's one of the more popular for formal writing)

Sometimes the rule is that X year old is not hyphenated, because spelled out numbers such as fifty-six are usually hyphenated and adding additional hyphens makes it confusing. If your style sheet would allow fifty six then hyphenation is more likely to be allowed in fifty-six-year-old but if your style sheet calls for fifty-six then you would put fifty-six year old and avoid adding additional hyphens. The Chicago style sheet avoids this by having specific digitizing rules that use numbers for everything below one hundred if age is involved, and no hyphens above one hundred, f'rex*.

Hyphens in generally are highly flexible compared to other punctuation since their purpose is to clarify by connecting concepts, and whether or not they clarify a specific sentence is highly variable. Compare with, say, periods that are used pretty much the same way in every style sheet as you don't need flexibility for them.

*The Bear Ribs style sheet is one of the few that uses f'rex as a contraction with great frequency.
 

strunkenwhite

Well-known member
(not to be confused with user @strunkenwhite, who's tendency to not capitalize formal names is a very uncommon thing in the US).
Thanks for the mention; I enjoyed your post :)

Admittedly I chose not to capitalize my own name, but I'm not aware of my own tendency to not capitalize formal names—unless you don't mean proper names...? Can you recall any examples?

P.S. "whose"

P.P.S. One interesting question around hyphens is, what happens when you put a hyphenated phrase inside a hyphenated phrase? Do they cancel out or not? I think most styles cancel them out, but I've never been entirely comfortable with this.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Thanks for the mention; I enjoyed your post :)

Admittedly I chose not to capitalize my own name, but I'm not aware of my own tendency to not capitalize formal names—unless you don't mean proper names...? Can you recall any examples?
No, not really, just ribbing the name a bit and punning off the authors of the famous manual Strunk & White. Did you pick your username based on their style manual?

P.S. "whose"
You are correct, that is proper usage. Chastisement accepted.

P.P.S. One interesting question around hyphens is, what happens when you put a hyphenated phrase inside a hyphenated phrase? Do they cancel out or not? I think most styles cancel them out, but I've never been entirely comfortable with this.
I've honestly never actually looked carefully at that situation and probably should. Hyphens, again, are generally among the most flexible pieces of punctuation since their entire purpose is connection and clarifying so even in more formal sheets generally the rules are "whatever makes it most readable, just do it consistently."
 

Doomsought

Well-known member
One interesting question around hyphens is, what happens when you put a hyphenated phrase inside a hyphenated phrase? Do they cancel out or not? I think most styles cancel them out, but I've never been entirely comfortable with this.
The colonel comes out to chastise you for being too silly.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
Thinking loosely on nested hyphenated phrases, my first inclination would be to restructure the sentence so that said phrases are separated rather than nested.
 

strunkenwhite

Well-known member
No, not really, just ribbing the name a bit and punning off the authors of the famous manual Strunk & White. Did you pick your username based on their style manual?
Indirectly, yes—the reference is more specific. In 1999 there was a satirical newspaper article about a fictional computer virus that blocked any email that was not in compliance with The Elements of Style. Sadly, I have just now realized that the name of the virus was indeed capitalized. I am ashamed.

Each time I tried to send one particular e-mail this morning, I got back this error message: 'Your dependent clause preceding your independent clause must be set off by commas, but one must not precede the conjunction.' I threw my laptop across the room.
 

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