News You Can Bruise for 2007 February 27 (entry 3)

(2) Tue Feb 27 2007 19:20 Crutches: I've noticed crutches I use in my long-form nonfiction writing; for instance, in the Ruby Cookbook I relied very heavily on the semicolon, for no good reason. The "See Also" sections at the ends of recipes are full of semicolons when I should have just used periods. I actually got rid of those semicolons, but many of my edits were lost by the incompetent post office.

In the REST book my crutch is the phrase "for instance". For instance this, for instance that. Again it can usually just be cut. I think I got most of them.

Comments:

Posted by Joe at Tue Feb 27 2007 21:40

I'd actually tried for a while to *increase*
my semicolon usage:

http://bitworking.org/news/A_semicolon_a_day

Posted by Rachel at Wed Feb 28 2007 13:46

I do stuff like that.