You may have been taught writing rules in the past that turn out to be myths. Rules become myths when they run contrary to the practice of excellent writers and are based on false linguistic assumptions.
Numerous writing myths abound—here are 6 common ones to watch out for:
1. Never start a sentence with But or And
This myth may stem from the tendency of novice writers to form sentence fragments that commonly begin with these two words. But good writers commonly begin sentences with these words. Here's one from Lincoln:
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground." —Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Here's one from the King James Bible:
"And the evening and the morning were the first day."
2. Never end a sentence with a preposition
Ending a sentence with a preposition does occasionally rob you of the opportunity to come down on a strong word.
There is, however, no grammatical prohibition against ending with a preposition, and in some situations advancing the preposition to mid-sentence causes weird distortions, a point illustrated by Winston Churchill's waggish reference to "the sort of thing up with which I will not put."
Note: Remember to not put the preposition in both places. For example, do not write, "That is the kind of story for which Shakespeare was famous for."
3. Never split an infinitive
The linguist David Crystal rightly notes that the original Star Trek television series would have lost something if the mission of the Enterprise had been, "Boldly to go where no man has gone before." Crystal observes that To boldly go has an iambic and therefore more natural, not to say poetic, rhythm.
Let rhythm and sense be your guides with infinitives. You certainly shouldn't split them if doing so makes the sentence hard to follow, as in H.W. Fowler's example:
"[The book's] main idea is to historically, even while events are maturing, and divinely - from the Divine point of view - impeach the European system of Church and States."
4. The only good sentence is a short sentence.
The 81-word final sentence of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address illustrates the wrongheadedness of this assumption.
So does the 181-word sentence that introduces Stephen Blackpool in Charles Dickens's Hard Times:
In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as the killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man's purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; among the multitude generically called "the Hands," - a race who would have found more favor with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs - lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age.
This sentence is perfectly grammatical (it's not a run-on sentence), and it's rather easy to follow. In fact, it's grammatically quite simple, with subject and predicate (highlighted in boldface) reversed yet in close proximity. Its long string of prepositional phrases (In the . . . in the . . . at the heart of . . . in the) filled out with relative and adverbial clauses, isn't gratuitous but a powerful verbal recreation of the "labyrinth" that leads to Stephen Blackpool's cramped and airless slum home, itself a symbol of the suffocating life lived by workers in early industrial England.
Dickens, worried about the effect of such a life both on the individuals forced to live it and on society as a whole, knew perfectly well how to make his point in a short sentence, as when he wrote, later in Hard Times: "All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy." But the earlier sentence is the fuse that makes the later one explode. Good writers know how to vary the length of sentences for maximum effect.
5. Never begin a sentence with Hopefully
"Hopefully, your package will arrive tomorrow."
By some, this sentence would be held ungrammatical, even arrogantly derided as foolish, on the grounds that a package, being incapable of emotion, could not possibly arrive "hopefully," i.e., full of hope. But in English it's common for an initial adverb to modify the sense of the entire following clause. Oddly, it's only "hopefully" that seems to disturb people. Would anyone object to "Mercifully, the ship survived the storm" because it wasn't the ship that displayed mercy? Luckily, more people seem to be realizing the absurdity of the ban on this indispensable word. It is to be hoped that soon writers will stop twisting their sentences into pretzels from misguided fear of its use.
6. Never use the passive voice
The active voice generally feels livelier to a reader, and the passive voice can be an invitation to avoid responsibility. However, the passive voice can be a means of varying sentence patterns, and it can even create cohesion between sentences. Also, sometimes the agent of the action in a sentence isn't important, and using the active voice would bring unneeded attention to that agent.
Of course, omitting agency can draw accusations of cowardice or deception from readers. Readers' distrust of the passive voice likely stems from bureaucratic and political discourse, where it is frequently used to evade responsibility. You may remember President Reagan's use of the passive voice after the Iran-Contra scandal: "Mistakes were made."
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