Writing Tips PDF

Following Edward Tufte I attempted to design the most useful single piece of paper to cram in the back of my fancy faux-leather Italian notebook. I built a Writer's Reference PDF including useful tips from hack writers like Strunk and White, George Orwell, and Edward Tufte. I also included a list of most common misspelled words.

Squeep.com

Print the sheet on good high quality acid free paper so when archaeologists dig up your Moleskine in a few hundred years it won't turn into a hunk of crackling yellowed pulp. I exported the sheet in PDF and agonized about the font before deciding upon 8pt Georgia. If you can think of more useful tips or a better design, do tell.

I printed my writer's tips on one side of a sheet of paper and a .pdf map of Middle Earth on the other. It is perhaps the single most useful piece of paper ever printed. I can mock my friends' extensive use of the passive voice and their barbarously bad use of adverbs and then diagram the battle of Minias Tirith with a single piece of paper.

Mike Shea's Writer's Reference PDF

Comments

[TPB, Esq.]

I like. I like a lot.

[Janet]

Indispensable! I love the writing tips.

[Joy]

Thank you! Very useful. It's printed and posted at my desk.

[Sylvia]

Sheesh, that picture just turns me on. There should be a name for the longing for and pleasure in a blank page and a good pen. Papyropennaphilia?

[Emil]

Nice sheet! Found via Google looking for something unrelated. Some potential improvements...

There's a typo in the second tip of Orwell's rules:
"Never _us_ a long word..."

Perhaps an extra space in "information transfer" in Tufte's section.

Perhaps periods at the end of Strunk & White and Heinlein tips for conformity with the other tips.

[Christopher]

This is great, thanks very much!