Table of Contents
Introduction 1
Part I How To Not Write Bad: The One-Word Version 15
Part II How To Not Write Wrong 25
A The Elements of House Style 25
1 Numbers and Abbreviations 26
2 Capitalization 27
3 Italics 29
4 There Is No Reason Ever to Use Boldface in a Piece of Writing, Except for a Section Heading (Like This) 30
B Punctuation 30
1 ' 30
2 - 35
3 - 39
4 , 40
5 ; 52
6 : 54
7 " " 54
8 ( ) 56
C Words 59
1 The Single Most Common Mistake Is the Most Easily Fixable Mistake 59
2 Spelling 59
3 Wrong Word 75
D Grammar 78
1 Sanitized 79
2 Skunked 82
3 Still Wrong 88
Part III How to Not Write Bad 103
A Punctuation 105
1 Quotation Marks 105
2 Exclamation Points, Dashes, Semicolons, Colons, Parentheses, Italics, and Rhetorical Questions 106
B Words and Phrases 108
1 Really Quick Fix: Avoid These Words! 108
2 Short Is Good (I) 116
3 Precision: Words That Are a Bit Off 119
4 Avoid Clichés Like the Plague 124
5 Euphemisms, Buzzwords, and Jargon 131
C Sentences 135
1 Word Rep. 135
2 Start Strong 139
3 End Strong 141
4 Short Is Good (II) 145
5 The Perils of Ambiguity 149
5 What Is the What? Or, the Trouble with Vague Pronouns 154
7 When You Catch a Preposition, Kill It 159
8 To Use to fie or Not to Use to Be 161
9 What the Meaning of "Is Is" Is 165
10 Tone 168
D Sentence to Sentence, Paragraph To Paragraph 169
Author's Note 173