Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

Re:Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or ... by jpeterson on Sunday November 25, 2012 @07:03PM (#4829741)

Strunk And White is a horrible book to learn how to actually write English well. It's full of contradictions, has some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow its own advice

Can you give some examples?

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Re:Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or ... by zedshaw on Sunday November 25, 2012 @08:04PM (#4829888)

I'll leave that to someone more qualified than me, Geoffrey K. Pullum:

http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549...

He "is head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh and co-author (with Rodney Huddleston) of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language".

But, go ahead and write like Strunk if you want to sound like a stiff 1890s dandy.

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Re:Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or ... by telemachos on Monday November 26, 2012 @07:43AM (#4831699)

In addition to the "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice" article that Zed links, Language Log[1] is a great source if you want to learn more about the problems with prescriptivism and Strunk and White in particular. Geoffrey Pullum is one of the founders, and he writes there often.

[1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/

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