Rules for Writing

Align left:  Always

Anonymous sources offer no legitimate support.

Bibliographical Entries: Author(s). Title. Publishing information. (Include dates.)

Bold: Never

CAPS: word-initial capital letters only

Colons: after complete-sentence promise, before explanation

Commas: mark natural pauses in reading aloud; between items in list

I owe everything to my parents, Ayn Rand, and God.

Confusions: advice/advise, an/and, are/our, begging/beginning, belief/believe, conscience/conscious, defiantly/definitely, decent/descent, even/even if/even though, feel/felt/fall/fell, image/imagine, it’s/its, lead/lead/led, life/live/live/lives, loss/lose/lost/loose, nowadays, past/passed, relay/rely, scarify/sacrifice, take for granted, than/then, their/there/they’re, to/too/two, weather/whether, who’s/whose.

Dates: MLA Style: Day Month-in-full Year: 18 February 2010

-ed: regular ending for past tense and past participle (used to)

Empty Words: actually, definitely, individual, in this day and age, in today’s society, in today’s world, kind of, particular, really, sort of

Exclamation Points: only after exclamations, not for emphasis

Extracted Quotes: for more than four lines of text; ½” APA, CMS; 1” MLA

Font: Times New Roman 12-pt

Gobbledygook: An example would be . . . (An example is . . .), the reason being (“because”), I had a question (I have . . . )

He or she or she or he: Use plural, articles, “one,” “we,” “you”; delete male pro-forms.

Headers: View, Header and Footer, Align Right, Family Name, Space, Click on #, Close.

Headings: (MLA Style) at left.

Hyphen vs. Dash: Hyphen: one-way street, forty-six, re-sign (vs resign), T-shirt; Dash used to set off a remark interpolated in a sentence (typed -- will coalesce into —).

IDs:  Identify work with your name, teacher’s name, class, section number, date; and task.

Indents: First lines of paragraphs ½” (Tab); extracted quotes.

Italics vs. Quotes: Italics for super-ordinate titles, double quotes for subordinate ones

Letters, not Sounds:  When you type, think spelling, not phonetics.

Modifiers: Always place modifiers immediately before their heads.

Page(s):  p. page, pp. pages

Parts of Speech: Learn noun, verb, and adjective forms: e.g., death, die, dead.

Passive: Only when the subject is not important, or must be hidden

Periods: New subject, new verb: new sentence. Separate with a period.

Quote (N): “repetition or copying of the words of another, usually with acknowledgment of the source”

Semi-colon: mini-period (divide closely related sentences); maxi-comma (divide internally comma-ed items in list).

Spacing: single-space entire file; never justify.

SVO: Never separate Subject from Verb or Verb from Object by punctuation.

Symbol: “something which stands for something else”

Tense: Present or past—keep to one.

Title Case: Capitalize initial letters of content, initial, and final words, and all five-or-more-letter words.

UND: Never

URLs: not as in-text citations. Give full info in bibliography.

Word Counts: Always. To measure text, highlight, Tools, Word Count.