By popular demand:
- Verbs has to agree with their subjects
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with
- And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction
- It is wrong to ever split an infinitive
- Avoid clichés like the plague (They’re old hat)
- Also, always avoid annoying alliteration
- Be more or less specific
- Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary
- Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies
- No sentence fragments
- Contradictions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used
- Eschew obfuscation
- Foreign words and phrases are not apropos
- Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous
- One should NEVER generalize
- Comparisons are as bad as clichés
- Don’t use no double negatives
- Avoid ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- One-word sentences? Eliminate
- Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake
- The passive voice is to be ignored
- Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas
- Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice
- DO NOT use exclamation points and all caps to emphasize!!
- Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them
- Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas
- Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed
- Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘I hate quotations, tell me what you know’
- Resist hyperboles; not one writer in a million can use it correctly
- Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
- Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement
- Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors
- Do not put statements in the negative form
- A writer must not shift your point of view
- Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences of ten or more words, to their antecedents
- Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided
- If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is
- Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing
- Always pick on the correct idiom
- The adverb always follows the verb
- Use the rite homonyms
- Proofread carefully to see if you any words out
Personally, I agree that to go from obedience to the rules resulting in mere mediocrity of the most boring kind, to greatness, one only has to break the rules.
