How to Write Good
- Avoid run-on sentences as they are hard to read and they
are often hard to follow the meaning of that the writer
intended when he sat down and wrote what you are reading
right now.
- No sentence fragments.
- It behooves us to avoid archaisms.
- Tame the temptation to test the tolerance of
alliteration.
- Also avoid the allure of allowing abundant assonance.
- There are no apostrophes in plurals that
arent possessives."
- Dont use no double negatives.
- If Ive told you once, Ive told you a million
times: resist hyperbole.
- Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
- Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
- Avoid trendy, slang lingo that sounds flaky.
- Writing carefully, dangling participles should not be
used.
- Kill all exclamation points!!!
- Never use a gargantuan word when a diminutive one will be
sufficient.
- Proofread carefully too see of you mispelled any words or
if you any words out.
- Take the bird by the horns when it comes to not mixing
metaphors.
- Dont verb nouns.
- Never, ever use repetitive redundancies over and over
again.
- A preposition isnt the best thing to end a sentence
with.
- But, if necessary, the previous rule is something with up
you dont have to put.
- Do not be afraid to use contractions. They are perfectly
acceptable, even for business communications.
- Be careful of sentences which misuse relative pronouns,
that are very clumsy.
- It is un-necessary, even non-sense, to over-hyphenate
words with pre-fixes.
- But in reader focused, high end writing, hyphens are a
top notch way to add message enhancing clarity to your
writing.
- Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.
- William Safire, embellished by Jim Schoemer Have
any other Safiresque contributions? Let me know!
Want to see how many of these rules play
out in the real world? Check out the Most Common Errors in Print Today
page.
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Communications. All rights reserved.