My. First. Blog. Post. Ever!

Yes, yes I know it’s grammatically incorrect to use one-word sentences—definitely for a mere mortal, and certainly for someone who does this for a living—but I felt a big event like my first-ever blog post was enough of a justification to get into the car, whip out my poetic license and begin driving…

And as long as I’m playing the poetic license card, I may as well break a few more sacred grammatical rules. On second thought…why strain my brain to come up with a witty list when a perfectly awesome one already exists. No sense in reinventing the wheel, right?

Enjoy the list below and have a great day!

William Safire’s Satirical Grammatical Rules

Note carefully that each of the following breaks the rule it describes.

1. Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
2. Don’t use no double negatives.
3. Use the semicolon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn’t.
4. Reserve the apostrophe for it’s proper use and omit it when its not needed.
5. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
6. No sentence fragments.
7. Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
8. Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
9. If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
10. A writer must not shift your point of view.
11. Eschew dialect, irregardless.
12. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
13. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!
14. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
15. Hyphenate between sy-llables and avoid un-necessary hyphens.
16. Don’t use contractions in formal writing.
17. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
18. It is incumbent on us to avoid archaisms.
19. Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.
20. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixed metaphors.
21. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
22. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
23. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
24. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.
25. Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
26. Don’t string too many prepositional phrases together unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
27. Always pick on the correct idiom.
28. “Avoid overuse of ‘quotation “marks.”’”
29. The adverb always follows the verb.

I hope these gave you a good laugh! They certainly gave me one.

Yours in crisp, error-free writing,
Jessica xx