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.
 
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
