An English Grammar Lesson

Engineering & Science Humor - RF CafeThese engineering and science tech-centric jokes, song parodies, anecdotes and assorted humor have been collected from friends and websites across the Internet. I check back occasionally for new fodder, but it seems all the old content is reappearing all over (like this is). The humor is light-hearted and clean and sometimes slightly assaultive to the easily-offended, so you are forewarned. It is all workplace-safe.

Humor #1, #2, #3

Here are several very important but often forgotten rules of English:

  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 hate 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. Be more or less specific.
  15. Understatement is always best.
  16. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
  17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
  18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
  19. The passive voice is to be avoided.
  20. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
  21. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
  22. Who needs rhetorical questions?
  23. Give me ambiguity or give me something else.

         from Roger Darlington's website