In school, we were taught to write for an academic audience. I always got in trouble for using colloquialisms when I should have used proper speech. But in the real world, does that really matter? (For example: are you all bothered by the fact that I started that sentence with “but”?) Jonathan Morrow argues that “good writing” is NOT writing grammatically correct sentences with a designated number of sentences per paragraph, but rather engaging your audience and keeping their interest.

What do you think makes good writing?