William Safire and Jim Schoemer's recommendations of how to write good.

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 apostrophe’s in plural’s that aren’t possessive’s."
Don’t use no double negatives.
If I’ve told you once, I’ve 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.
Don’t verb nouns.
Never, ever use repetitive redundancies over and over again.
A preposition isn’t the best thing to end a sentence with.
But, if necessary, the previous rule is something with up you don’t 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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