How to Write Badly Well

I discovered How To Write Badly Well last weekend and loved it. It’s a blog that takes each major writing no-no and illustrates it by way of some very bad prose. For a writer it’s hilarious stuff indeed. This recent entry entitled “Present your research in the form of dialogue” gives you an idea of what to expect:

‘My god,’ said Geoff, ‘so it’s true. We hold in our very hands the original draft of the hitherto unknown third treaty of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia signed by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III himself.’

‘Yes,’ confirmed Sally. ‘Who would have thought when we set off this morning for this remote Swiss village that we would end the day in possession of the very document which marked the birth of modern European statehood?’

‘Certainly not me!’ laughed Geoff.

’Nor me!’ guffawed Sally.

‘And to think,’ Geoff extemporised, ‘the Ratification of the Treaty of Münster occurred exactly three hundred and sixty-one years ago last week!’