April 07, 2010
April 06, 2010
If you need a laugh...
I was going over paper guidelines I have to follow for a class, when I came across these instructions:
A former colleague of mine, David Allen Black, offered these reminders for papers:
- Always avoid alliteration.
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
- Avoid clichés like the plague.
- Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
- Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
- Foreign words and phrases are hardly apropos.
- Never generalize.
- Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
- Don't be redundant or use more words than necessary: it's highly superfluous.
- Be more or less specific.
- One-word sentences? Eliminate.
- The passive voice is to be avoided.
- Even if a metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
- Employ the vernacular.
- Analogies are like feathers on a snake.
- Contractions aren't proper.
- Eliminate quotations: as Emerson once said, "I have quotations."
- Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
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