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Never use “you” except for direct address
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NEVER hit the spacebar more than once in a row.
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Spaces come after punctuation, not before.
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Avoid the passive tense.
The active tense is where someone does something. In the passive tense, it’s hard to tell who did it.
Active: I broke the pencil
Passive: The pencil broke. or The pencil got broken.-
Use active verbs.
Active: The boy ran to the store.
Continuous (going on and on): The boy was running to the store.
Incomplete: The boy running to the store.
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Never use “The End” at the end of a story or poem. That’s for movies.
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You don’t need to use “then” or “next” to indicate order: if it comes later in the sentence or paragraph, people will know it comes next.
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Try not to repeat the same word in one paragraph.
(aside from function words such as and and the) -
When talking about yourself and another person, put the other person first, and use the pronoun you would use if the other person wasn't there:
John and I went to the store.
not
Me and John went to the store. -
After you have named a character in a paragraph, use pronouns for the rest of the paragraph unless doing so would become confusing.
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In regular prose, don’t abbreviate words or use ampersands.
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Vary your sentence structure -- complex, compound, or both.
