{"id":11296,"date":"2017-03-26T11:54:48","date_gmt":"2017-03-26T11:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/?p=11296"},"modified":"2019-11-28T13:55:50","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T13:55:50","slug":"formal-tics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/formal-tics\/","title":{"rendered":"Be wary of formal tics when writing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Was giving a friend some writing feedback, and realized there&#8217;s a simple name for what most new <span class=\"highlightNode\">writers<\/span> struggle with: a formal tic.<\/p>\n<p>It begins in school, where we&#8217;re conditioned to write for examiners. We&#8217;re artificially incentivized to use big words and elaborate sentences. And we continue to write for imaginary examiners long after we&#8217;ve graduated.<\/p>\n<p>Some people do this reflexively, because they worry they won&#8217;t be taken seriously.<\/p>\n<div class=\"text_exposed_show\">\n<p>Others do this deliberately, to intimidate readers into submission.<\/p>\n<p>And sometimes we&#8217;re plain lazy, using multiple words (&#8220;I&#8217;m intrigued and fascinated&#8230;&#8221;) because choosing the most appropriate word can be hard work.<\/p>\n<p>In all cases, it can become a habit that&#8217;s hard to shake. It gets even harder if you fall into the trap of deciding that overwrought words are your &#8220;style&#8221; or &#8220;voice&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It takes some guts to keep things simple. But that&#8217;s the price you&#8217;ve got to pay if you&#8217;re serious about writing better.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Was giving a friend some writing feedback, and realized there&#8217;s a simple name for what most new writers struggle with:&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[60],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-11296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-advice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/shakespeare-park-avengers.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wrnV-2Wc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11296"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11605,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11296\/revisions\/11605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/marketing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}