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 LiNCS voice: 725-4627 Stanford University fax: 725-9942
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