How to Write English Good
From the Yogi Berra School of Brooklynese
- It has come to
our considered attention that in a great many cases, far too
many people use many more words than is absolutely necessary
when engaged in the time-honored practice of writing sentences.
- Avoid dyed-in-the-wool
cliches like the plague.
- About sentence
fragments.
- Verbs has to agree
with their subjects.
- Avoid the use
of foreign phrases in your written tete-a-tetes.
- A couple of points
to remember are: (1) consistency and (b) use parallel construction.
- Prooffread your
work to avoid mispellings.
- Don't verb nouns.
- If the writer
is considerate of the reader, he won't have a problem with
ambiguous sentences.
- Its important
to make sure a pronoun is used properly. Make sure it's possessive
is correct.
- The smothering
of verbs is a cause of weakening of the sentence impact.
- The passive voice
should be avoided.
- A preposition
is something you should not end a sentence with. Or as Winston
Churchill observed, "This is the type of nonsense up
with which I will not put!"
- Beware of dangling
participles writing sentences.
- This sentence
no verb.
- Don't never use
no double negatives. (The best example of this is in Gone
with the Wind, "I don't know nothing 'bout birthing
no babies.")
- It is good practice
to never split infinitives.
- Be aware of the
conditional form of a verb if you was to use it.
- Eschew Obfuscation!
- Avoid the utilization
of enlarged verbal constructs when shortened examples will
suffice.
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