Your job as a writer is to make your subjects clear and interesting.

Assuming you aren’t working on the next Waiting for Godot, you’ll work to make sure your meaning is clear and easy to grasp.

And assuming you aren’t editing Wikipedia, you’ll work to make it lively and fresh.

But sometimes, well-meaning attempts to give your writing life end up producing writing that’s silly, trivial, cluttered, or condescending.

Lively writing is wonderful. Paragraph after paragraph of neon-rainbow unicorn vomit (with glitter) is less wonderful.

Even if you like sparkle (I do), you just need a little. Too much glitter always looks cheap.

So …read more