How to write a homily — or a bulletin announcement

Time magazine lauds Alice Munro’s newest collection of short stories, The View from Castle Rock (Knopf) as a master class in the craft. In the review of the book, Pico Iyer draws out ten writing principles, many of which can be adapted to writing homilies, letters to parents, parish policies, and bulletin announcements. My favorite is:

2) Don't eschew the plain. In one typical exchange here, 38 spoken words out of 39 are just one syllable long (the exception is "cannot"). In a later story, 37 straight words last one syllable each.

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