These are my continuing thoughts on Juanele’s writing style. I know it’s organized poorly: I’m just adding stuff as I think of it.

Juanele follows American English conventions.

One example: Quotation marks go outside of all other punctuation. This is a pain in my ass to fix all the time. So, please, remember this rule, particularly non-native speakers who learned British English.

Traveling not travelling; colors, not colours, just two spelling examples.

How to write currency

ARS $50

USD $50

for examples.

How to write hours of the day

12-hour clock
Capitalized AM and PM with a space between the number and the letters.

Example:

Wussmann Galería
Monday – Friday
2 PM – 7 PM

OR

11:30 AM – 7:30 PM

GRAMMAR

A sentence has one subject and one verb.

If your sentence doesn’t have a clear subject and verb then you are writing bad English. Juanele hates sentence fragments. Write prose, not poetry.

Further, if you have more than one subject/verb combination then you probably meant to write two sentences rather than one. Remove that “and;” separate them.

Don’t be afraid of the first-person.

Bloggers blog in the first person. Establish familiarity and rapport with readers and encourage repeat visits by writing with “I” as a subject. It’s OK. Juanele is not an arts journal; it’s a blog. I want smart bloggers but not academic ones.

Further, there is no “we”.

You are not omniscient. You don’t know how any particular group of people will receive, react or respond to a work of art. Unless you’ve actually polled a statistically valid sample of the people who looked at that painting, then you have no idea what’s going on in the minds of “the spectators.”

Have the self-possession to tell us what you think and feel, how you reacted, using your knowledge and experience. Extrapolate your reactions to those of others, if you wish, but remember you’re only guessing.

Don’t be a phony.

You were “captivated” by something you saw? Really? “Excited”? “Overwhelmed”? “Stunned”? These words set off my bullshit detector, and many readers’, as well. Avoid hyperbole, please.

Avoid jargon.

Words like discourse, mise en scene, detourn make no sense to the general reader. If you use jargon like this you’d better have a really good reason or be prepared to explain the term to the 95% of our readers who don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Better yet, use another, simpler word or words. If you don’t, I will, or I will simply remove it.

Avoid passive sentence construction and the verb “to be.”

Before you submit your article to me, perform a search on your text for conjugations of the verb “to be.” If you have more than 5 instances of “is, was, were or been” in a 500-word article, then you are using “to be” too much. Instead, use strong verbs that don’t need adverbs. Use strong, simple verbs with a clear subject.

Describe, explain and opine; Don’t preach.

Don’t make your subject an object. She’s too important for that. Fix most errors in passive voice by switching the object to become the subject.

The ball was thrown by Jack.

Ugh.

No, Jack threw the ball.

Any violation of this rule tells me that you’ve just written a first draft. Congratulations! Now, go rewrite it.

Make your point in the first paragraph.

Very few readers make it past the first few sentences of your first paragraph. If you haven’t summarized your main point or given the most important information of the whole article in the first paragraph, then you need to rewrite it. If your point requires some explanation, then open with some strong description or a quote.

Short paragraphs are better than long ones.

Readers on the Web find short paragraphs easier to read. They will not retain as much information if they find your article hard to read. I can provide studies that prove this if you don’t believe me. Reading on the Web is not the same as reading a book. Adhering to this rule will also help your own writing. A paragraph should, more or less, contain one unit of thought. Shorten paragraphs and make your points quicker and clearer. Discover how many useless sentences you’ve actually written.

Short sentences are better than long ones.

Just like paragraphs, sentences should contain one coherent thought. You can correct bad writing and avoid run-on sentences very easily by splitting up a long sentence full of commas and clauses into two or three shorter sentences. Sometimes this creates awkward, ugly sentences; but that just means you have to make them stronger and prettier. Adding more words is absolutely the wrong way to fix bad writing.