Don’t Be Afraid to Break the Rules

(Second in a series of articles about improving your writing.)

By fourth grade in my Catholic grade school, the good nuns had drilled into my head all the parts of speech, the punctuation rules and grammar regulations that were never to be broken, lest they show up on my permanent record. We diagrammed long, rambling sentences, marking the nouns with one red line and the verbs with two, adjectives with a diagonal and adverbs with a squiggly mark. By the time we were done, our diagrams looked like schematics for the Space Shuttle.

At the risk of getting a rap on the knuckles, I’m here to tell you to forget all those rules.

Writing is about communicating. It’s about making the reader feel comfortable with your words, about setting a friendly tone, about being clear and concise. It’s not about blindly following archaic rules that can get in the way of effective communication.

Here are a couple of rules I’m giving you permission to break without fear of an icy glare from the nun in the front of the room:

Ending Sentences with a Preposition. A big no-no, right? No matter how convoluted a sentence might get, we were warned that ending a sentence with a preposition might lead to the end of life as we know it. Well, modern linguists say a preposition is perfectly acceptable to end a sentence with. For example, “Depending on foreign oil is something we want to get rid of” sounds a whole lot better than “Depending on foreign oil is something of which we want to get rid.”

Using Sentence Fragments. Ho boy, did we used to get in trouble for these. In quiet times, I still hear a screeching voice in my head: “Every sentence has to have a predicate.”

Or not.

Sentence fragments can be used for dramatic effect. And to add rhythm. But only sparingly. Used too often, sentence fragments can make your writing sound choppy and clipped.

Starting Sentences with a Conjunction. I once had to stay after school for using a conjunction to start a sentence. And that wasn’t the worst of it. I had to wash dinner dishes at the convent. Or I could have taken out their trash. But the real punishment was when I had to go home and tell my mother. For me to do that was difficult.

See, it’s not that difficult.

Using One-Sentence Paragraphs. We were told a paragraph had to contain a complete thought. Well, who ever said you can’t have a complete thought in one sentence?

Using one sentences paragraphs can provide a dramatic shift in rhythm for your reader. Paragraph after paragraph that contain sentence after sentence of the same construction can lull your reader to sleep. Writing should be varied to keep the reader interested and awake.

That’s where one sentence paragraphs can help.

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