Favorite Fumblerules of Grammar

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A fumblerule is a rule that breaks itself. English teachers have created and collected lists of grammar fumblerules for years, maybe for generations. Science editor George L. Trigg and NY Times columnist William Safire pulled together two long lists of these rules and published them in the 1970s.

Here are some of my favorites…

• Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read.
• Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
• Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
• No sentence fragments.
• Make sure each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
• If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing. In my opinion, I think that an author when he is writing should definitely not get into the habit of making use of too many unnecessary words that he does not really need in order to put his message across.
• Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
• Don’t use no double negatives.
• “Avoid overuse of ‘quotation “marks.”‘”
• Don’t abbrev.
• It behooves us all to eschew archaic expressions.
• Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.

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