- Always avoid alliteration.
- Prepositions are not words to
end sentences with.
- Avoid clichés like the
plague—they're old hat.
- Employ the vernacular.
- Eschew ampersands &
abbreviations, etc.
- Parenthetical remarks (however
relevant) are unnecessary.
- Parenthetical words however must
be enclosed in commas.
- It is wrong to ever split an
infinitive.
- Contractions aren't necessary.
- Do not use a foreign word when
there is an adequate English quid pro quo.
- One should never generalize.
- Eliminate quotations. As Ralph
Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
- Comparisons are as bad as
clichés.
- Don't be redundant; don't use
more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
- It behooves you to avoid archaic
expressions.
- Avoid archaic spellings too.
- Understatement is always best.
- Exaggeration is a billion times
worse than understatement.
- One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Always!
- Analogies in writing are like
feathers on a snake.
- The passive voice should not be
used.
- Go around the barn at high noon
to avoid colloquialisms.
- Don't repeat yourself, or say
again what you have said before.
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
- Don't use commas, that, are not,
necessary.
- Do not use hyperbole; not one in
a million can do it effectively.
- Never use a big word when a
diminutive alternative would suffice.
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- Subject and verb always has to
agree.
- Be more or less specific.
- Placing a comma between subject
and predicate, is not correct.
- Use you're spell checker to
avoid misspelling and to catch typographical errors.
- Don't repeat yourself, or say
again what you have said before.
- Don't be redundant.
- Use the apostrophe in it's
proper place and omit it when its not needed.
- Don't never use no double
negatives.
- Proofread carefully to see if
you any words out.
- Hopefully, you will use words
correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
- Eschew obfuscation.
- No sentence fragments.
- Don't indulge in sesquipedalian
lexicological constructions.
- A writer must not shift your
point of view.
- Don't overuse exclamation
marks!!
- Place pronouns as close as
possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 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.
- Avoid trendy locutions that
sound flaky.
- 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.
- Take the bull by the hand and
avoid mixing metaphors.
- If you reread your work, you can
find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and
editing.
- And always be sure to finish
what
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