If you want a fascinating example of the law of unintended consequences, check out how the non-rule “Don’t end a sentence with a preposition” has led to an irritating and meaningless sentence quirk that is maddeningly popular, particularly among inexperienced writers who want to sound more “fancy” or “correct.” (I won’t bore you with the

We have a winner! Congrats to Don Sutton, the winner of the first ever *Writing Bad* competition! (See the Comments section below for the other 2 entries in full. They’re good too.) I enlisted three writing professors (who also like fun stuff) to judge the entries without any names attached, so it was all as

I have recruited 3 trained writing professionals to judge the entries I received. I will post the winner in the next couple of hours, and contact him/her about what prize they would like. Stay tuned!

“Back then, it was illegal to burn someone else’s barn down, even if you were trying to disintegrate your mother.” For the inaugural installment of my new game *Writing Bad*, we will be playing The Clam Before the Storm. Here are the rules, which (along with a further explanation) are also on the Page above

I am starting an occasional segment on this blog called “Writing Bad,” which, as the title suggests, focuses on writing that is bad! Here are some of the ways we will be celebrating bad writing: — A segment where I post actual lines I have read in student essays (completely anonymized, of course) over the