My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules, which follow:

1.   Avoid alliteration. Always.
 
2.   Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. 

3.   Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.) 

4.   Employ the vernacular.

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. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I have quotations. Tell me what you
       know.”

12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.

13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.

14. Profanity sucks.

15. Be more or less specific.

16. Understatement is always best.

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. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.

23. Who needs rhetorical questions?