"Literary Composition" by H.P. Lovecraft (1919)

It seems the nature of the English language, or at least the American version of it, has changed substantially enough that much of his complaints are no longer valid by today's standards. For example, nobody cares about compound words like viewpoint or upkeep, or the examples he gives as use of nouns as verbs. Welp, language has always been dynamic, so a 21st century author needs to be mindful his tips here are from over a hundred years ago and adjust accordingly.

Although ambiguous use of pronouns is one I see too often, and have been guilty of myself more often than I care to admit. Whenever I see myself using too many pronouns in too short a span, I go back and modify to be more clear. It always produces a vastly superior result. Pay very close attention to that one.

Some new words for me in this one:

bathos = an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.

pleonasm = the use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning, either as a fault of style or for emphasis.

denouement = the final part of a play, movie, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved.

The picture used is "Quill & Parchment - Window display outside of Heraldry shop in Fantasyland" by PhotogJS used here under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/).

To follow along: https://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/lc.aspx