The moment somebody else writes a post for you, you discover that your voice was never written down — only performed. What comes back is grammatically fine and unmistakably not you.
One page, four parts
- Three adjectives, and one you are not — “warm, precise, unfussy; never breathless”
- Words we use and words we do not, as an actual list
- Three sentences from your own posts that sound most like you
- Three sentences rewritten wrong, with a line on why
The fourth part does the most work. Showing somebody a good sentence teaches slowly; showing them the same sentence spoiled teaches immediately.
Things worth deciding once
Do you use emoji, and where. Do you write “we” or “I”. Exclamation marks: never, sparingly, or freely. Formal or informal address, in languages that have both. Each of these is a coin flip that should not be flipped again every post.
Write it for a competent stranger, not for yourself. The test is whether somebody who has never met you could write two posts you would publish unchanged.
