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Subject:William Saffire's rules for writers -Reply From:"Mark D. Walker" <MWALKER -at- CONNECT4 -dot- SLC -dot- UNISYSGSG -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 17 Aug 1994 14:49:55 -0700
Here is another list of rules for writers. I first saw it about
1987.
1. Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
2. Just between you and I, case is important.
3. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
4. Watch out for irregular verbs which have crope into our language.
5. Don't use no double negatives.
6. A writer must not shift your point of view.
7. When dangling, don't use participles.
8. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
9. Don't write a run-on sentence you got to punctuate it.
10. About sentence fragments.
11. In letters themes reports articles and so on use commas to
separate a string of items.
12. Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
13. Its important to use apostrophe's correctly.
14. Don't abbrev.
15. Check to make sure you didn't any words out.
16. In my opinion, I think that an author, when writing, shouldn't
get into the habit of making use of too many unecessary words
that are not really needed.
17. Try not to actually split infinitives.
18. Last, but not least, lay off cliches.