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PAMELA BROWNING'S BLOG

Writing Well

I wish I knew who wrote these rules. I first came across them many years ago and have been trying to find out the author ever since. Here they are, and I've added a few enhancements to the original.

The 26 Rules of Writing Well

1) Don't abbrev.
2) Check to see if you any words out.
3) Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.
4) About sentence fragments.
5) When dangling, don't use participles.
6) Don't use no double negatives.
7) Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
8) Just between you and I, case is important.
9) Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
10) Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.
11) Its important to use apostrophe's right.
12) It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.
13) Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.
14) Only Proper nouns should be capitalized. also a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop
15) Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.
16) In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.
17) Watch out for irregular verbs that have creeped and snuck into our language.
18) Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
19) Avoid unnecessary redundancy.
20) A writer mustn't shift your point of view.
21) Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it.
22) A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.
23) Avoid clichés like the plague.
24) 1 time only I will tell you this - never start a sentence with a number.
25) Always check your work for accuracy and completely.

I'm sure this was written before auto-correct because my word-processing program kept fixing the errors. As an editor, I can appreciate this. As a writer trying to get a blog posted, I don't. But I do thank the anonymous author for a few good laughs over the years.
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