Writer and editor Doug told Bored Panda that in order to get a reader's attention, a sentence doesn't necessarily have to be bizarre or unusual. However, it all depends on the context.
"Opening lines for stories or essays often benefit from a little twist because they're meant to draw a reader into the world you're creating. Then again, one of the most famous sentences in the English language is 'Jesus wept,' which is short, straightforward, and not bizarre, unusual, or even that descriptive. I'll bang this drum again: if context isn't everything, it's most of it."
Doug told Bored Panda that many new writers cannot grasp the idea that they should be writing less and omitting some details. "New writers often believe more is more and, as a result, they'll start doing something I call 'tap-dancing in front of a burning building.' Essentially, this means you're drawing more attention to yourself as a writer than the picture you're trying to create because you lack restraint. Let the reader fill in some of the gaps in their own minds and resist the urge to toss descriptive and figurative language in every sentence."
Founded back in the summer of 2018, r/BrandNewSentence celebrates the idea that never before seen sentences can pop up at any time, in any place. Whatever you might think of social media, you can’t deny that it’s a goldmine of awesome content if you know where to look. And the members of r/BrandNewSentence definitely know where to look.
Naturally, the subreddit is all about uniqueness, so reposts aren’t allowed. According to the mods, in order for a sentence to qualify for being posted on the sub, it has to “never been said before,” cannot be an idiom, and has to be “humorous or confusingly worded.”
The subreddit’s moderators suggest that people check the uniqueness of a sentence by searching for it on Google (don’t forget the double quotation marks to look for exact quotes) before posting anything.
“If the results produced are many and have various apparition dates, it is most likely that the sentence is brand new. If there are many results, but all on the same day, the sentence is likely new (and therefore qualifies for this sub) but has become popular (which is OK),” they explain.
Previously, Bored Panda spoke to Dr. Lisa McLendon, from the University of Kansas, about keeping our English skills sharp and our grammar game up to par. According to her, there are some pitfalls that non-native speakers tend to fall into when learning English.
“For students whose native language lacks articles (a, an, the), articles are by far the hardest category of words to master. Verb tense/aspect is also really hard—the difference between ‘I read,’ ‘I am reading,’ and ‘I do read’ is nonexistent in many other languages,” Lisa told us. However, native speakers deal with their own linguistic challenges.
In her experience as an editor, as well as a teacher, Lisa noticed that native speakers have a lot of trouble with past passive participles in speech (for example. saying ‘I had went’). When it comes to writing, they find punctuation, homophones (for instance, peek vs. peak), and misplaced modifiers challenging.
“Read! Read widely and frequently. Read magazines, newspapers, novels, even cereal boxes. But be careful when scrolling through social media, which although it can give you a good idea of current slang and shorthand, is often not a great model of clarity, accuracy, or good grammar,” the professor gave advice for anyone wanting to improve.
According to her, if we rely too much on spell-check and autocorrect, we can end up turning off our critical thinking skills. In short, we can forget how to think and write.
“Because spell-check and autocorrect are everywhere, what seems to be the biggest problem is words that are spelled correctly but aren’t the right word, like ‘form’ instead of ‘from,’ ‘it’s’ instead of ‘its,’ or ‘defiantly’ instead of ‘definitely.’”
The professor also suggests having someone look over your work in order to find any mistakes that you might have left behind.
“When you’ve written something, your brain already knows what you’re thinking and what you meant to say, even if you didn’t actually say it. So when you read your own writing, you unconsciously fill in missing words, skip over typos, fail to see ambiguity, etc. Another person, someone who sees only what’s on the page and not what’s in your head, can help you spot mistakes and improve your writing. This is especially important if you are carving something in stone or getting a tattoo with words in it.”
