The little red writing book - Brandon Royal 2007

Summary of the 20 writing principles and the 40 rules of grammar
Appendixes

Part I: Structure

Principle 1: Write your conclusion and place it first.

Principle 2: Break your subject into two to four major parts and use a lead sentence.

Principle 3: Use transition words to signal the flow of your writing.

Principle 4: Use the six basic writing structures to put ideas in their proper order.

Principle 5: Finish discussing one topic before going on to discuss other topics.

Part II: Style

Principle 6: Use specific and concrete words to support what you say.

Principle 7: Add personal examples to make your writing more memorable.

Principle 8: Use simple words to express your ideas.

Principle 9: Make your writing clearer by dividing up long sentences.

Principle 10: Cut out redundancies, excessive qualification, and needless self-reference.

Principle 11: Favor active sentences, not passive sentences.

Principle 12: Avoid nominalizing your verbs and adjectives.

Principle 13: Express a series of items in consistent, parallel form.

Principle 14: Vary the length and beginnings of your sentences.

Principle 15: Write with a positive, personal tone.

Principle 16: Avoid using the masculine generic to refer to both genders.

Part III: Readability

Principle 17: Add more space around your writing to increase readability.

Principle 18: Make key words and phrases stand out.

Principle 19: Use headings and headlines to divide or summarize your writing.

Principle 20: Wait until your writing stands still before you call it finished.

Part IV: Grammar

Rule 1: “And” always creates a compound subject.

Rule 2: If two items joined by “and” are deemed to be a single unit, then the subject is considered singular, and a singular verb is required.

Rule 3: When the subject of a sentence consists of two items joined by “or,” the subject may either singular or plural. If the two items joined by “or” are both singular, then the subject and verb are singular. If the two items joined by “or” are both plural, then the subject and verb are plural. If one of the two items joined by “or” is singular and the other plural, the verb matches the subject that comes after “or.”

Rule 4: “Pseudo-compound subjects” do not make singular subjects plural.

Rule 5: Prepositional phrases (i.e., phrases introduced by a preposition) can never contain the subject of a sentence.

Rule 6: “There is/there are” and “here is/here are” constructions represent special situations where the verb comes before the subject, not after the subject.

Rule 7: When acting as subjects of a sentence, gerunds and infinitives are always singular and require singular verbs.

Rule 8: “-One,” “-body,” and “-thing” indefinite pronouns are always singular.

Rule 9: Certain indefinite pronouns — “both,” “few,” “many,” and “several” — are always plural.

Rule 10: “Some” and “none” indefinite pronouns may be singular or plural.

Rule 11: In “either … or” and “neither … nor” constructions, the verb matches the subject which comes directly after the “or” or “nor.”

Rule 12: Collective nouns denote a group of individuals (e.g., family, government, assembly, crew). If the collective noun refers to a group as a whole or the idea of oneness predominates, use a singular verb. If not, use a plural verb.

Rule 13: “The number” is a singular noun and takes a singular verb. “A number” is plural and takes a plural verb.

Rule 14: Percents or fractions, when followed by an “of phrase,” can take a singular or plural verb. The key lies in determining whether the noun within the “of phrase” is singular or plural.

Rule 15: Measurements involving money (e.g., dollars, pounds), time (e.g., five years, the fifties), weight (e.g., pounds, kilograms), or volume (e.g., gallons, kilograms) are always singular and take singular verbs.

Rule 16: As a general guide, pronouns at or near the front of a sentence take their subjective forms; pronouns at or near the back of a sentence take their objective forms. The precise rule, however, is that pronouns take their subjective form when they are subjects of a verb; they take their objective form when they are objects of a verb.

Rule 17: Pronouns take their objective form when they are the direct objects of prepositions.

Rule 18: When forming comparisons using “than” or “as … as,” supply any “missing words” (e.g., a verb in the examples below) in order to determine whether the subjective or objective form of the pronoun is correct.

Rule 19: Who vs. Whom. “Who” is the subjective form of the pronoun, and “whom” is the objective form of the pronoun. If “he,” “she,” or “they” can be substituted for a pronoun in context, the correct form is “who.” If “him,” “her,” or “them” can be substituted for a pronoun in context, the correct form is “whom.”

Rule 20: Do not use a reflexive pronoun (a pronoun ending in “-self”) if an ordinary personal pronoun will suffice.

Rule 21: Pronouns must agree in number with their antecedents.

Rule 22: Pronouns should not be ambiguous in context. If a pronoun does not refer clearly to a specific noun, it results in a situation of “ambiguous pronoun reference.”

Rule 23: “Pronoun shifts,” also known as “shifts in point of view,” involve the inconsistent matching of pronouns, either in terms of person or number. Within a single sentence (and perhaps within an entire paragraph or writing piece), first person should be matched with first person, second person matched with second person, and third person matched with third person. A common violation involves matching the third-person “one” or “a person” with the second-person “you.” Another violation involves matching the third-person singular “he,” “she,” “one,” or “a person” with the third-person plural “they.”

Rule 24: A misplaced modifier refers to a word which, because of its placement within a sentence, no longer modifies what it originally was intended to modify.

Rule 25: A dangling modifier refers to a situation in which the thing being modified is absent from the sentence.

Rule 26: Occasionally, a modifier or modifying phrase may accidentally be placed where it could modify either of the two words or phrases. This situation results in a “squinting modifier.” Because it is unclear which of two words or phrases are being modified, the writer should consider rewriting this sentence to clear up this ambiguity.

Rule 27: Whenever a sentence opens with a phrase or clause that is set off by a comma, check to make sure that the first word that follows the comma is properly being modified by the opening phrase or clause that precedes it.

Rule 28: Verbs should follow consistent form. Typically this means that all verbs should end in “-ed” or “-ing.”

Rule 29: When prepositions are used before items in a series of three, there are two possibilities with regard to their use. Either a single preposition is used before the first item in a series (but not with the next two items) or prepositions are used before each item in the series.

Rule 30: Correlative conjunctions (e.g., “either … or,” “neither … nor,” “not only … but also,” and “both … and”) require that parallelism be maintained after each component part of the correlative.

Rule 31: Gerunds and infinitives should be presented in parallel form. Where possible, gerunds are matched with gerunds and infinitives are matched with infinitives.

Rule 32: At times we can acceptably omit words in a sentence and still retain clear meaning. To check for faulty parallelism (in this context also known as improper use of ellipsis), complete each sentence component and make sure that each part of the sentence can stand on its own.

Rule 33: The superlative (“-est”) is used when comparing three or more persons or things; the comparative (“-er”) is used when comparing exactly two persons or things.

Rule 34: Remember to compare the characteristics of one thing to the characteristics of another thing, not the characteristics of one thing directly to another thing.

Rule 35: Faulty or improper comparisons often leave out key words, particularly demonstrative pronouns such as “those” and “that,” which are essential to meaning.

Rule 36: “Like” is used with phrases. “As” is used with clauses. A “phrase” is a group of related words that doesn’t have both a subject and a verb. A “clause” is a group of related words that does have a subject and a verb. An easier way to remember the difference is to simply say, “A phrase is a group of words which doesn’t have a verb; a clause is a group of words which does have a verb.”

Rule 37: Consistent use of verb tenses generally requires that a single sentence be written solely in the present, past, or future tense.

Rule 38: The present perfect tense employs the verbs “has” or “have.” The past perfect tense employs the auxiliary “had.” The future perfect tense employs the verb form “will have.”

Rule 39: The subjunctive mood uses the verb “were” instead of “was.” The subjunctive mood is used to indicate a hypothetical situation — it may express a wish, doubt, or possibility. It is also used to indicate a contrary-to-fact situation.

Rule 40: Conditional statements are most commonly expressed in an “If … then” format, in which case an “if” clause is followed by a “results” clause. Confusion often arises as to whether to use “will” or “would.” The choice between these verb forms depends on whether a given conditional statement involves the subjunctive. For situations involving the subjunctive, the appropriate verb form is “would.” For situations not involving the subjunctive, the verb form is “will.” A helpful hint is that “would” is often used in conjunction with “were” — the appearance of both these words within the same sentence is the telltale sign of the subjunctive.

If technique is of no interest to a writer,

I doubt that the writer is an artist.

—Marianne Moore