The good folks over at Grammarly, an automated grammar checker and grammar coach, have been trying to find the answer to an age-old question: When it comes to writing chops, which sex has the upper hand?
They polled 3,000 men and women to find out which writing traits were associated with which gender and the answers can be found in this infographic below.
Everyone has their personal peccadilloes about travel writing terms like ‘off the beaten path’ or ‘sun-drenched’, but individual qualms shouldn’t mean a blanket ban on these phrases. These may be overused clichés, but sometimes — to borrow another particularly well-worn cliché — they hit the nail on the head.
However, there are some words and formulaic travel phrases that are so overused, they are positively exhausted. Many of them are churned out so regularly in travel writing that they have lost all meaning, and no longer register with readers. And yet, thanks to writerly laziness, these hackneyed phrases keep cropping up again and again.
We’ve named and shamed 12 of the worst offenders below; our own dirty dozen of travel writing clichés.
Not a quaff
This month, we have saved some of our most expertly-crafted travel article writing for the September edition of Private Air Magazine, among them this handy little guide to a luxe weekend getaway in California Wine Country.
We focused on the things Napa Valley does best: divine food, first-class wine and pampering. There are peaceful hotel and spa refuges hidden among the vineyards, as well as hand-made chocolates and multi-course feasts. And then, of course, there’s the wine. We’ve singled out some of the most distinguished boutique wineries in the region, where you can taste exclusive blends and limited-production vintages that you won’t find anywhere else.
If Napa Valley wasn’t on your bucket list before, it may be now…
Private dining at Meadowood Restaurant
Scroll to the comments section of any online travel article and chances are you will find the grammar police up in arms. Yet not all grammar rules are inviolable laws. The truth is, language is malleable and constantly evolving. Perfect grammar may be the ideal, but when it comes to travel content writing, clear communication is preferable.
Good writing is about communication with an audience, so good writers should not blindly follow syntactic rules at the expense of clarity. Here are a just a few anti-grammar tips to help you improve your travel writing technique.
Classroom grammar rules are sometimes best ignored
