CW.SDT: show, don’t tell.

Make your language concrete, not abstract; specific, not general. Trust your reader to understand the clues you provide. In the Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer uses details as clues to character. The Knight wears a garment stained with rust from his armor; the young Oxford scholar keeps twenty volumes of Aristotle’s philosophy beside his bed; the Prioress weeps when she sees a mouse caught in a trap; and the Reeve always rides last among the pilgrims. In every case Chaucer conveys an impression of the person without using any abstractions or generalizations.

CW.Con: maintain a consistent style and tone.

If your narrator is a six-year-old boy, do not use words he could not understand. If a character is a drug dealer in the ghetto, he should speak like one. If you are writing a poem in a romantic style, an unseemly word or image can spoil the serious effect.

Which part of each sentence below is inconsistent with the effect the writer seeks?

The eagle arced through the prairie sky, swooped across the plain, snatched its prey in its talons, and soared to its nest to chow down.

“Mommy,” pleaded the girl in the toy store, “can Santa bring me the teddy bear which is on the shelf?”

CW.Ad: use adjectives and adverbs with restraint.

They quickly start sounding artificial:

OVERDONE: Graceful white gulls hovered lazily above the shimmering blue sea as the glistening, golden sun beamed brightly.

CW.Vul: use vulgar language responsibly.

Sometimes vulgarity is appropriate; if your characters are tough guys on the street, they should not talk like nuns. However, there are more original and interesting methods than four-letter words to show that someone is tough or upset. If you must describe something embarrassing (sickness, for example), describing it indirectly takes more art and shows better taste. Vulgarity for its own sake only calls attention to itself and, at times, to the insecurity of the people who use it.

Be careful, too, in using language that might be offensive, such as slurs pertaining to ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or religion. Consider your audience. Will they realize that you are using the language ironically?

CW.Arch: use archaic English correctly.

If you set a story or poem in the past and use archaic English, do it grammatically and consistently. No Medieval knight or American Pilgrim ever said, “I loveth thou,” which is as clumsy as saying, “Him love she.” The grammatical rules are easy to learn. Where we say “you,” English speakers once used other pronouns:

Subjective case: thou (singular); ye (plural)

Objective case: thee (singular); you (plural)

Possessive case: thy, thine (singular); you, yours (plural)

“Thine” was used when the word that followed began with a vowel (“thy fear” but “thine ear”). Sometimes the same distinction was made with “my” and “mine.”

WRONG: My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

RIGHT: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Verb conjugations differed only in the second and third person: