Tuesday, February 10, 2009

The Wonders of the English Language...

1. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don't start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
6. Comparisons are as bad a cliches.
7. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
8. Be more or less specific.
9. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary (in most cases).
10. Also too, never, ever use repeating repetitive redundancies.
11. Bad sentence fragments.
12. Foreign words are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant and use more words than necessary as it's highly superfluous and simply not helpful.
14. One should never generalize.
15. Don't use no double negatives.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be ignored.
19. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
20. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
21. If you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.


Take those for what you will...