Word Usage – The Memoir Network | RSS

Clichés in your memoir—you need them like you need a hole in the head.

Denis Ledoux — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 16:15:53 +0000

You can avoid cliches and stereotypes. If you do not avoid cliches and stereotypes, you will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in often erroneous and certainly indefensible categories. (more…)

A Faulty Process Is—Well—Useless

Denis Ledoux — Thu, 08 Feb 2024 11:00:00 +0000

One memoir writer who had spent two or three years writing her story submitted her formatted manuscript to me for a final edit. She told me she hadn’t gotten help writing a memoir because she hadn’t wanted to be influenced. As I read her story, I struggled to find its focus. There didn’t seem to […]

Sweetheart, Are You Using Precise Words for Your Memoir?

Denis Ledoux — Thu, 03 Aug 2023 18:00:00 +0000

The clearer you are in your choice of precise words, the easier it will be for your reader to understand your writing. The reader will be able to respond to you as you wish the reader to respond—instead of looking around while you are pleading “sweetheart, sweetheart.” (more…)

More on Using Precise Language

Denis Ledoux — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 11:00:00 +0000

Many memoir writers are under the impression that you need to have an extensive vocabulary to write. An extensive vocabulary can only help you–if by “extensive” you mean many precise words—not just “big” ones. More important is using precise language. (more…)

Word Usage

Denis Ledoux — Tue, 12 Feb 2019 11:00:47 +0000

Every once in a while, I send you some of my verbal pet peeves. Here are a few other unfortunate phrases that have come my way recently. 1. Amazon just today was offering me a “free gift.” (more…)

Watch out for Word Re-inforcers

Denis Ledoux — Thu, 17 Jan 2019 11:00:09 +0000

Letting words mean what they mean… In a previous post, I wrote about using words more precisely than we often do. Specifically, I pointed out redundant usages. Today I would like to rant about a few other phrases that have come my way recently. I call them word re-inforcers. They are like redundant words but […]

Don’t De-value Your Characters by Using Cliches and Stereotypes

Denis Ledoux — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 11:00:34 +0000

Don’t devalue your characters by using cliches and stereotypes. This will undermine the unique and personal feel of your memoir. Cliches and stereotypes place people in categories. As short-hand ways of writing and speaking, they reflect ready-made thoughts and adversely affect the ways we relate to our families and friends as unique individuals. (more…)

Word Lightning: the Right Word Will Dazzle Your Memoir’s Reader

Denis Ledoux — Thu, 20 Sep 2018 10:00:31 +0000

Is choosing the right word really important in writing a memoir? “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.” —Mark Twain Lightning dazzles the eye. The sky is split open. Sometimes it makes our hair stand on end. A lightning bug, on the […]

Five Takes for Writing with Good Grammar

Denis Ledoux — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 10:00:46 +0000

Memoir writers sometimes ask, “Is writing with good grammar important?” Yes and no. To anyone beginning to write lifestories, I would caution, “Get your story down on paper and don’t worry about “good grammar”—at least, not at first.” (more…)

Redundant word usage

Denis Ledoux — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 09:55:44 +0000

Redundant word usage is rampant! As a writer, I am chagrined when words get misused and one particular miscreant is redundant word usage. (more…)