Nowe u two can rite gud!

Howe two rite gud

Frank L. Visco

Vice-president and Senior Copywriter at US Advertising.

My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:

Avoid alliteration. Always.

Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

Avoid cliches like the plague. (Theyre old hat.)

Employ the vernacular.

Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.

Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.

It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.

Contractions arent necessary.

Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.

One should never generalize.

Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.

Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

Dont be redundant; dont more use words than necessary; its highly superfluous.

Profanity sucks dick.

Be more or less specific.

Understatement is always best.

Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.

One-word sentences? Never.

Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.

The passive voice is to be avoided.

Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.

Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

Who needs rhetorical questions?

Be careful to use apostrophes correctly.

Do not use them pronouns as modifiers.

And never start a sentence with a conjunction.