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Frohnmayer's & Nafziger's
31 Nitty-Gritty Writing Rules
- Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
- Just between you and I, case is important.
- Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
- Watch out for irregular verbs which has crope into our language.
- Don't use no double negatives.
- A writer mustn't shift your point of view.
- When dangling, don't use participles.
A participle is a complex word,
Acts both as adjective and as verb.
When dangling the meaning is unclear,
So listen closely and you will hear.
- Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
- Don't write a run-on sentence you got to punctuate it.
- About sentence fragments.
- In letters themes reports articles and stuff like that we use commas to keep a string of them apart.
- Don't use commas, which aren't necessary.
- Its important to use apostrophe's right.
- Don't abbrev.
- Check to see if you any words out.
- In my opinion I think that an author when he is writing shouldn't get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words that he does not really need.
- It is wrong to completely split the infinitive.
- A preposition is something you shouldn't end a sentence with.
- Spel carefully and PROO FREAD!
- Use orthodox spelling thruout.
- The active voice should be used whenever possible.
- Don't overuse the exclamation mark!!
- Don't overuse "legal" phraseology; the aforesaid does not, however, proscribe, foreclose and/or abolish, pro tanto, each and every exception hereinafter described, respectively, in regard to thereto.
- Hopefully, you will not gross out with colloquialisms.
- Do not use adverbs unusually.
- Unless it is not really warranted, try not to put language in anything but positive form.
- It may seem sort of different than ordinary speech, but irregardless of what you've heard, write according to the rules.
- Make sure that expressions are as good or better than if they were rearranged.
- Be careful in using S' in the possessive.
- Avoiding redundancy means maintaining a clear focus on basic essential fundamentals.
- Last but not least, lay off clichés.
Corrections to other common mistakes:
A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the subject.
Don't join independent clauses by a comma.
Enclose parenthetical expressions between commas.
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