Bad analogies

If you want to write well, avoid these analogies, actually written by high-school students:

"Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze."

"He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree."

"McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty Bag filled with vegetable soup."

"The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't."

"John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met."

And my fave:

"Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at 35 mph."

—"Strange World," Campus Life, Vol. 56, no. 9.

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