On the day that the Alaskan Governor exits her office, this was just too delicious to pass up.
As I say all the time, good writing is in the editing. Revision is critical. A good editor can take even Sarah Palin’s word salad and make it (mostly) understandable. It still may not be logical, but you can’t have everything.
Vanity Fair’s editors have marked up Sarah Palin’s resignation speech and published the results. I’m not comfortable posting the images here (and not sure it would be legal), but I can link you to it!
You know you can write better than Sarah Palin, so imagine what a little more polishing could do for your writing!
Lessons we can take away from this exercise:
- Cut introductions from the beginning of sentences. Just start. Don’t preface sentences unless using a transitional word or phrase adds clarity or improves the flow.
- Reduce three and four word phrases to one or two words, or cut them entirely.
- Cut superfluous sentences that lead nowhere or are incongruous with the main idea of the paragraph.
- Make sure that all sentences have a subject and a verb.
- Use a consistent voice and verb tense. Active voice is better.
- Beware the dangling participle!
And so we bid farewll to Governor Palin and say hello to just good ‘ole Sarah. You ‘betcha! 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I love this type of info. Can you add some examples?
I understand that Alaska is holding Screen Door parties (as in don’t let the screen door hit you in the back). Unfortunately, we have not heard the last of this hate monger.
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Screen door parties! LOL I hadn’t heard that.
If you want to see examples related to this post, visit the Vanity Fair link. The editors marked up a hardcopy of the speech and then scanned the pages and posted them. I just didn’t want Vanity Fair coming after me for taking their images. I’ll have to remember to ask Arianna Huffington how that works
As for seeing the last of Sarah, I’m sure we’ll have future opportunities to learn from editing her speeches. Quite sure.