Venolia’s Reverse Rules for Writers
Monday, May 24th, 2004
This fun list of rules that demonstrate themselves is from the excellent stylebook Write Right! by Jan Venolia, Ten Speed Press, ISBN: 0-89815-676-9.
Sometimes a tongue-in-cheek approach is effective in fixing a subject in our minds. In that spirit, I present the following summary of the subjects covered in Write Right! - plus a few not mentioned.
Put the apostrophe where its needed.
Never let a colon separate: the main parts of the sentence.
Avoid overuse, of commas.
Reserve the dash - which is often overused - for emphasis.
Avoid un-necessary hyphens; divide words only between sy-llables.
Use a semicolon where needed, use it properly; and never where not called for.
Avoid run-on sentences they seem to go on forever.
In general, don’t abbrev.
Have a good reason for Capitalizing a word.
In formal writing, don’t use contractions.
Consult a dictionery for correct spelling.
Observe the rule that verbs has to agree with their subjects.
Make each subject and pronoun agree in their number, too.
Use parallel construction in writing sentences, forming paragraphs, and to emphasize a point.
After studying these rules, dangling modifiers will be easy to correct.
Omit unnecessary, excess words that aren’t needed.
Generally, writing should be in the active voice.
Don’t use trendy words whose parameters are not viable.
Avoid verbing a noun.
The careful writer avoids bias in his words.
Watch out for irregular verbs that have crope into your language.
Eschew archaic words.
Proofread carefully in case you any words out.
When a writer has chosen a point of view, you should stick to it.
Mixing metaphors can be a real stroke of lightning.
No matter how hard you try, typos often silp by.
No double negatives are seldom inappropriate.
