Style Sheet For
Today
by Doug Hawley
Community
– Add after any group
Wrong – Brown haired
Wrong - Scientists
Right – Brown haired community
Right – Scientific community
Commas – separate items in a list, but not
clauses
Clauses – There are none – college
educated people don’t understand them.
Conjunctions – Use at the beginning of a
sentence
Wrong – He was at home, but he went to town.
Right – He was at home. But he
went to town.
Impact – Use wherever educated people would
use affect or effect. Use everywhere.
Wrong – The injury had effects had affected
him.
Right – Impact impact impact impact impact.
Gender – There are none. Put an x
after titles or group names. No him,
her, he, she, hers, his it is now them, they
theirs.
Wrong – Panda
Wrong – Ms.
Wrong – Him
Right - Pandax
Right – Mx (Not to be confused with the
missile. Ignore spell check redlining
Mx)
Right – They
Ethnic designation – Person of color, even
though no one knows exactly to whom it applies (are
Janpanese or Iranians poc, who knows?)
Wrong – Colored person despite its
similarity to person of color
Wrong - Non-white
Wrong – Anything other than person of color
Reported or alleged – Never use. Use
reportedly or allegedly, adverbs that might apply
to something, but probably not.
Wrong – He was reported to have stolen a
safe.
Right – He reportedly stole a safe.
Hopefully – Always use without specifying
who is hoping. Never use hoped.
Wrong – He hoped she would win.
Right – Hopefully she would win.
Issue – Use in place of problem, error,
mistake. Those words should never be
used.
Wrong – He died of cancer.
Right – He died from a health issue.
Clichés – Use one until it has been used
ten million times, for ten years or until it
becomes popular again.
Wrong – I have decided that I am interested
in Jen.
Wrong - Bad appearance
Right – I walked back Jen not being on my
radar.
Right - Bad optics
Grammar rules or spelling don’t apply
anywhere unless you want certain jobs, so write
as though you were texting in any other situation.
Wrong birthday card – Happy birthday on your
80th Grandmother
Right birthday card – Grammar, happy bday ur
80, lol
Nouns and verbs – Change nouns to verbs and
verbs to nouns
Wrong – He spends his weekdays requesting
donations from businesses, and he hopes that they
will send him big donations.
Right – He weekdays sending big asks to the
business community. And hopefully they
will gift him big donations.
The
author is a little old curmudgeon who has been
labelled a "language bigot" and worse. Don't
worry, his kind will die out soon, lol.
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