Good English

[Horace Greeley]

Bob,

Are you sure you don't have the Chicago Manual of Style under your pillow?

Horace

>robert moffatt piano service wrote:
>
>   List,
>
>   A little something on the lighter side some of you may enjoy.
>
>   Here are several very important but often forgotten rules of English:
>
>   1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
>   2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
>   3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
>   4. Employ the vernacular.
>   5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
>   6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
>   7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
>   8. Contractions aren't necessary.
>   9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
>  10. One should never generalize.
>  11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "I hate
>      quotations. Tell me what you know."
>  12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
>  13. Don't be redundant; don't more use words than necessary; it's
>      highly superfluous.
>  14. Profanity sucks.
>  15. Be more or less specific.
>  16. Understatement is always best.
>  17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
>  18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
>  19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
>  20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
>  21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
>  22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
>  23. Who needs rhetorical questions?
>
>  Bob Moffatt
>  Calgary, Alberta
>  Canada




Horace Greeley			hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu

	"Always forgive your enemies,
		nothing annoys them so much.

			-	Oscar Wilde

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