How Not to Write: The Essential Misrules of GrammarW. W. Norton & Company, 17.07.2005 - 162 Seiten These fifty humorous misrules of grammar will open the eyes of writers of all levels to fine style. How Not to Write is a wickedly witty book about grammar, usage, and style. William Safire, the author of the New York Times Magazine column "On Language," homes in on the "essential misrules of grammar," those mistakes that call attention to the major rules and regulations of writing. He tells you the correct way to write and then tells you when it is all right to break the rules. In this lighthearted guide, he chooses the most common and perplexing concerns of writers new and old. Each mini-chapter starts by stating a misrule like "Don't use Capital letters without good REASON." Safire then follows up with solid and entertaining advice on language, grammar, and life. He covers a vast territory from capitalization, split infinitives (it turns out you can split one if done meaningfully), run-on sentences, and semi-colons to contractions, the double negative, dangling participles, and even onomatopoeia. Originally published under the title Fumblerules. |
Inhalt
Do not put statements in the negative form | |
Dont use contractions in formal writing | 1 |
The adverb always follows the verb | 4 |
Make an all out effort to hyphenate when necessary but not when unnecessary | 7 |
Dont use Capital letters without good REASON | 8 |
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do | 87 |
The rigid rule of i before e except after c raises spelling to a sceince | 90 |
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out | 93 |
Use parallel structure when you write and in speaking | 96 |
Boycott eponyms | 99 |
Ixnay on colloquial stuff | 102 |
Of all the rules about indefinite pronouns none is useful | 105 |
Zap onomatopoeia | 108 |
It behooves us to avoid archaisms | 9 |
Reserve the apostrophe for its proper use and omit it when its not needed | 10 |
Write all adverbial forms correct | 10 |
In their writing everyone should make sure that their pronouns agree with its antecedent | 12 |
Use the semicolon properly use it between complete but related thoughts and not between an independent clause and a mere phrase | 14 |
Dont use no double negatives | 14 |
Also avoid all awkward or affected alliteration | 15 |
When a dependent clause precedes an independent clause put a comma after the dependent clause | 54 |
If Ive told you once Ive told you a thousand times Resist hyperbole | 57 |
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence a linking verb is | 60 |
Avoid commas that are not necessary | 63 |
Verbs has to agree with their subjects | 66 |
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky | 69 |
The male pronoun embraces the female is a nonsexist standard that should be followed by all humankind | 72 |
And dont start a sentence with a conjunction | 75 |
The passive voice should never be used | 78 |
Writing carefully dangling participles should be avoided | 81 |
Unless you are quoting other peoples exclamations kill all exclamation points | 84 |
Resist new verb forms that have snuck into the language | 111 |
Better to walk through the valley of the shadow of death than to string prepositional phrases | 114 |
You should just avoid confusing readers with misplaced modifiers | 116 |
One will not have needed the future perfect tense in ones entire life | 119 |
Place pronouns as close as possible especially in long sentencessuch as those often or more wordsto their antecedents | 122 |
Eschew dialect irregardless | 125 |
Remember to never split an infinitive | 128 |
Take the bull by the hand and dont mix metaphors | 131 |
Dont verb nouns | 134 |
Deaccession euphemisms | 137 |
Always pick on the correct idiom | 140 |
If this were subjunctive Im in the wrong mood | 143 |
Never ever use repetitive redundancies | 146 |
Avoid overuse of marks | 149 |
Never use prepositions to end sentences with | 152 |
Last but not least avoid clichés like the plague | 155 |
Recognitions and Thanks | 159 |
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Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
active voice adverb ain't alliteration apostrophe archaisms avoid back-formed bah-dee become better blerule bureaucratize called cliches colloquial comma confusing conjunction connotation construed as singular copy editor correct dangling dependent clause dialect double negative Earl Warren eponyms euphemism exclamation point feel fladverbs flat frog fumblerule future perfect tense Gettysburg Address grammar hype hyperbole hyphen idiom indefinite pronoun kids knock language maven linking verb litotes locutions look mark mean mistake modifiers never Norma Loquendi noun onomatopoeia paragraph participle passive past tense pause Permissive grammarians person pluperfect plural preposition prose quickly quotation readers with misplaced Recast rigid grammarians Ronald Colman Safire scrod semicolon sentence fragment sexism slang sneaked snuck sort of sentence sound speakers split the infinitive Standard English Stick subjunctive swinging tence thing thought tion trick tube verb form William Safire word wrong wrote