Writing advice is a lie. - by Henry Oliver

commonreader.co.uk · 1,033 words · saved by 1 readers

Just learn grammar and rhetoric instead

So many people read writing advice. It’s everywhere. The woods are full of it. Even here on Substack, half the Literature leaderboard is essentially self-help and writing advice. Here’s the thing. You should ignore this stuff. Almost all of it is wrong. Flat wrong. Plain wrong. Waste-of-time wrong. Most of it isn’t going to teach you where to put your verbs or what a left-branching sentence is. Most of it isn’t going to teach you the tropes of rhetoric or the patterns of syntax. You won’t ever read the most important thing a writer can know, that grammar is logic. Instead, they’ll make…

Writing advice is a lie. - by Henry Oliver

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