I love bad writing, really bad writing. It gives me the illusion of superiority. When I see bad writing and recognize it as such - the key thing here being recognizing it as such - I smirk and puff up and think that I can do better. Here is a link of bad writing examples supposedly taken from college papers. LINK
My favorite one is this:
The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
I would think that saying the brick red wall would be sufficient. How about writing something like this:

Amos stared at the brick red wall trying to remember what had seemed so important only moments ago.
I can only imagine how the original writer might have continued. It would go something like this:
The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon. Amos stared at the red brick wall which was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon. He was trying to remember something important. He fished into his pocket and took out a brick-red Crayola crayon which was the same color as the red brick wall he was staring at.

Admittedly my own writing isn’t any better sometimes, but I did get a good laugh from the bad writing examples.

Posted by Lady Diva on Friday, April 29th, 2005 at 6:51 pm.