A girl in my grad school program used this site to teach a mini-lecture on travel, and as I do for most things in life, I poached it for my blog.

Some gems: Don't...

• Use cliches. Editor of The Australian Way, the QANTAS inflight magazine, Tom Brentnall comments: "A pearl is found in an oyster. There is only one Mecca, the birthplace of Mohammed, in Saudi Arabia - it is not some trendy retail strip of designer clothing stores." (Ouch! How many writers have been guilty of this one?) Brentnall continues, "Paradise is where you go when you die (it is not five minutes from an airport) and a magnet relates to electrical polarity."
• Overdo the adjectives. Words you wouldn't dream of using in conversation, often appear in travel writing: "fabled, wondrous, roseate."
• Go silly with personification. Do buildings ever really smile; do ruins beckon at every turn; do chimney tops sing their welcome? I don't think so.
• Use the first person. Fascinating as your reactions might be to your immediate family, the rest of the world frankly doesn't give a damn what you thought as you took your first mouthful of Mexican food.
• Mention religious or ethnic differences. It's so easy to patronise when you wax lyrical about the quaint little customs of the villagers; the interesting way the townspeople behave at funerals etc.
• Use "reverse-racism". To quote Brentnall again, "It is sad how many articles we get that describe people of non-Caucasian descent as being 'well-trained', 'polite', 'professional', 'well-spoken' and 'hygienic' (seriously)."

A fun assignment for yourself, if you're ever in a state of writers block, is to write a travel piece including all these don't's when writing a travel guide to your home town. "The proud people of Detroit are relatively advanced..."