(12-15-2019, 02:15 PM)Chance Wrote: The problem you are addressing in #4 is sometimes called stream of consciousness writing, meaning that the person just dumps their thoughts onto the medium as they occur, then never goes back and organizes them.
Rules to make the content more sensible:
Do not overuse words. There is almost always more than one descriptive that can be applied to a situation.
Avoid excessive superlatives. The magnificently awesome description rarely is.
One thought, one sentence. (ex: Cats have fur. Sometimes, the fur is multiple colors.)
Group similar thoughts together; when the topic changes, new paragraph. Corollary: Even with the same topic, when the thought changes, new paragraphs apply.
Before you publish, try to read your material as if you are someone other than yourself. If you can't do it in your head, read it Slowly and Thoroughly out loud. Do not make the mistake of "knowing" what you wrote because you will miss places where you did not include words, where the word order is incorrect, or where the spell checker betrayed you with a correctly spelled, wrong, word choice.
If your writing is important, and you have time, have someone else read it before you publish, especially for "official" correspondence.
Admittedly, not all rules apply in every situation, but I use most of the above all the time.
For the record, before posting, I read the entire post twice, replaced several words, restructured a couple of lines, moved three of them and removed an entire paragraph.
