Last night, I received the note below from Isabel Escoda, Hong Kong-based Filipino English teacher, book writer, and features contributor to various publications both in the Philippines and in Hong Kong. She gave me permission to post it for her in the Forum.
The note:
Hi, Jose! Just received your forum notice. As an English teacher here in Hong Kong, I sometimes like to trot out the hilarious rules below that I saved some years ago. Called “Fumblerules,” they were written by The New York Times’ William Safire. Here they are:
20 HELPFUL HINTS ON HOW TO WRITE GOOD
1. Don’t use no double negatives
2. Never use a long word when a dimunitive one will do
3. Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read
4. No sentence fragments
5. It behooves one to avoid archaisms
6. Avoid commas, that are unnecessary
7. Kill all exclamation points!!!
8. Don’t verb nouns
9. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive
10. Take the bull by the hand, and don’t mix metaphors
11. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies
12. Always avoid Awkward or Affected Alliteration
13. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: resist
hyperbole
14. Who needs rhetorical questions?
15. Foreign words and phrases, even if de rigueur, are not
apropos
16. Contractions aren’t necessary
17. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with
18. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement
19. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out
20. Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague!
