User:Owynhart/Style

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“ We can remind ourselves of the reasons to strive for good style: to enhance the spread of ideas, to exemplify attention to detail, and to add to the beauty of the world. ” — Steven Pinker, The Sense of Style

Principles

This is the style of grammar in which I write and edit—most of the time. It's also important to know that English is a living language, hence there are no rules that can be enforced, as the language evolves before our eyes and ears. But having a sense of style separates good prose from bad, just like having a fashionable sense of dress separates the vogue from the homely.

1. Refrain from the Oxford comma, but encourage its use if only for a brief musical pause or needed clarity. Same with all other types of commas.
2. Refrain from semicolons unless for rhythmic reasons. It's better to include a semicolon when it sounds fine than replace it with something cacophonous.
3. Periods and commas inside quotations: "Betsy tasted a nice tang," according to Tom's report of the after-party. This is mostly correct for American English.
4. Active voice over passive voice to avoid pretentiousness and obscurity. It's also more democratic.
5. One space after end-punctuation. As far as I know, Wikipedia cannot be accessed via typewriters.
6. They can be gender neutral, because s/he is awkward to see and she/he is awkward to read, quite frankly.
7. Words over numbers (Arabic), unless the article belongs in the STEM category. Statistics should be in numbers. Worded numbers should not exceed two words hyphenated. The typical practice of words for one to ten and the rest be numbers is fine, too.
8. "Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous." —George Orwell.