... or How to Write Gooder...

Someone sent me this eons ago, but it still works today. Here are several very important but often forgotten rules of English:

• Avoid alliteration. Always.
• Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
• Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
• Employ the vernacular.
• Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
• Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
• It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
• Contractions aren’t necessary.
• Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
• One should never generalize.
• Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
• Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
• Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
• Be more or less specific.
• Understatement is always best.
• Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
• One-word sentences? Eliminate.
• Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
• The passive voice is to be avoided.
• Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
• Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
• Who needs rhetorical questions?

On a more serious note, here is some practical advise for writing.

• Avoid adverbs and words ending in "ly".
• Don’t use the following phrases:
  "was referring to"
  "which happened to be"
  "for him"
  "he knew"
• Watch for "be" and "ing" verbs
• Cut out "began to" and "started to"