PRESS Style Manual & More

By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

STYLE MANUAL: Consistency in writing is critical to its ease of understanding. Therefore, style manuals are maintained to guide the writers. Following the PRESS style manual will ensure clearly written presentations. Below find 25 rules compiled from various online sources on how to write well:

1. Always avoid awkward, affected alliterations.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid clichés like the plague.
4. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. No sentence fragments.
12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
13. Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Be careful to use apostrophe’s correctly.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Proofread carefully to see whether you any words out.
23. While a transcendent vocabulary is laudable, one must nevertheless keep incessant surveillance against such loquacious, effusive, voluble verbosity that the calculated objective of communication becomes ensconced in obscurity.
24. Avoid run-on sentences they are hard to read and what you really should be doing is using commas and semicolons and even periods to break the sentence up into more digestible chunks.
25. And never start a sentence with a conjunction.

YOGI BERRA: "It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

QUESTION: We haven’t checked it out, though it seems plausible, here’s the latest e-mail inquiry circulating in cyberspace:"

Just for fun, try to identify this outfit of over 500 employees with the following statistics:

29 have been accused of spousal abuse; 7 have been arrested for fraud; 19 have been accused of writing bad checks; 117 have bankrupted at least two businesses; 3 have been arrested for assault; 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit; 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges; 8 have been arrested for shoplifting; 21 are current defendants in lawsuits; in 1998 alone, 84 were stopped for drunk driving.

Give up?"

ANSWER: "It’s the 535 members of your United States Congress – the same group that perpetually cranks out hundreds upon hundreds of new laws designed to keep the rest of us in line."

GAS: I don’t understand the uproar over gas prices, I just put $20 worth into my car and it didn’t cost any more than it usually does. 

Received online: You think a gallon of gasoline is expensive?

Diet Snapple, 16oz @$1.29 is $10.32 gallon . . . Lipton Ice Tea, 16oz @$1.19 is $9.52 gallon . . .Gatorade, 20oz @$1.59 is $10.17 gallon . . . Ocean Spray 16oz @$1.25 is $10.00 gallon . . . Pint of milk 16oz @$1.59 is $12.72 gallon . . . Vick’s Nyquil 6oz @$8.35 is $178.13 gallon . . . Pepto Bismol 4oz @$3.85 is $123.20 gallon . . . Whiteout 7oz @$1.39 is $25.42 gallon . . . Scope 1.5oz for $0.99 equals $ 84.48 gallon . . . And this is the REAL KICKER: Evian water 9oz @$1.49 is $ 21.19 gallon . . . $21.19 FOR WATER!!

Technology is a wonderful thing. The gas pumps of today can pump $25 in the same amount of time it took just to pump $12.50 last year.

THOUGHT: If pro is opposite of con, then what is the opposite of progress?

CLASSFIED AD: The phone rang in the obituary department of the local newspaper. "How much does it cost to have an obituary printed?" asked a woman. "It’s five dollars a word, ma’am," the clerk replied politely.

"Fine," said the woman after a moment. "Got a pencil?"

"Yes ma’am."

"Got some paper?"

"Yes ma’am."

"Okay, write this down: ‘Cohen dead’."

"That’s all?" asked the clerk disbelievingly.

"That’s it."

"I’m sorry ma’am, I should have told you - there’s a five word minimum."

"Yes, you should’ve," snapped the woman. Now let me think a minute... okay, got a pencil?"

"Yes ma’am."

"Got some paper?"

"Yes, ma’am."

"Okay, here goes: ‘Cohen dead. Cadillac for Sale’."

TWO RULES FOR LIFE:

#1.Don’t tell people everything you know.

#2.

FEEDBACK: We’ve said it before: this writer, every writer thrives on feedback. We sit and pound the keys of a computer sharing the words with ourselves and an editor. It’s not until you run into someone in a restaurant, get a phone call, letter, message or e-mail that you really know people are reading and reacting.

When someone calls and asks: "Do you want my opinion?" It’s always a negative one.

To Mark and Mort and Carol and Clark; to Doug, Peter, Barry, Jim and Marsha and everyone else who has called, written or e-mailed, thanx and please keep it up.

Let any writer you read and appreciate, know you’re reacting.

E-mail, if you have it, is real easy.

_____________________________

Michael Schenkler can be reached at: MSchenkler@queenspress.com