37.16 Final comments
Finally, excellent advice, with a humorous slant, appears on the offical plain language website of the US government, including these gems:
- Avoid Alliteration. Always.
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
- Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
- Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- Contractions aren’t necessary.
- One should never generalize.
- Be more or less specific.
- Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
- Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
- Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
- Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
- Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
- Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
- If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.