Examples Of Bad Writing

Everybody has a favorite: A piece of writing which makes them throw up every time they see it. Let's share.

The movie version of "The Handmaid's Tale" opened with the superposed text, "Once upon a time, in the recent future..."

"And a good time was had by all..."

See also: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

There's always The Eye of Argon.

http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~susan/sf/argon.htm

Songs that rhyme "hold [one's] hand" with "understand".

"I Want to Hold Your Hand" by the Beatles - I let this one slide because it's in the title, and they could only come up with so many rhymes.
"I Got You Babe" by Sonny and Cher

How about songs that rhyme "fly" with "sky"?

"I believe I can fly, I believe I can touch the sky" by R-Kelly.
"I wish I could fly, way up to the sky, but I can't" Keith Harris and Orvill (BritishCulturalAssumption in play here)

They can't hold a candle to bad power ballads that rhyme "lie", "cry", and "die".

In a novel which shall remain unidentified (to protect its author's reputation), we find the following:

: On the way out, I stepped on something and looked down. It was a penny. Farther on there were two more. They looked like they had been flung down with some force.

I know the last sentence was written for its humorous effect, but the literal part of me keeps wondering how one can distinguish between a penny that was gently and lovingly placed on the ground and one that was flung with some force. Perhaps the latter was bent by the impact.

It's not Bulwer-Lytton, but still I wince.

This one is not Bulwer-Lytton either, which makes it even more frightening. It was part of story submitted to the rather exacting literary magazine at my alma mater--the first one. After all they never saw fit to publish me, so they must be strict, right?!. It was passed out in a creative writing class as an example of what not to do. I keep this passage taped in my journal to remind myself that no matter how low I sink, at least I'm better than this poor, deluded soul:

"Out of my orifices of vision crept tentitive droplets of salinity as I recalled Mama in the waning days of August, thirty-four summers ago. The tears crawled out softly murmuring, 'We know it's not easy to let us go, but until you do--only then can we flow as a river with an angst-ridden memory and cleanse this face of a pain unforgotten.'

Bouncing along to the rhythm of my sobs, seated near the aft of the bus enrout to work. . ."

There is so much wrong, and so much going on in general, in this passage, that the head swims and I tremble to think what the rest of the work looked like. If you are reading this and this passage is yours, I'm sorry, or actually I'm not. Please, please don't quit your day job.--DanielleOviatt

How about some examples of bad technical documentation?

Maybe we could start a bad technical documentation in the spirit of the Bulwer-Lytton contest:

``Do not weep, gentle programmer, for the system functions have all been heaved relentlessly into the sys package, sitting there silently, alone, in the dark, hoping and praying that maybe one day you, gentle programmer, may once again call them (up).''