Have you ever noticed that, while your writing teacher corrects your punctuation and your tenses, famous authors use them in novels all the time? If you pay attention, though, those novels are sometimes written from a certain character's point of view, that is, the character is telling the story. Other times, the author only breaks the grammatical rules when he is writing one character's dialog. In these cases, the author is using grammar to reveal details about a character.
Make no mistake. These authors know how to use perfect grammar, but they choose to break the rules in order to let us infer more about a character. You must know the rules before you break them!
Here are some examples of how you can have fun with the rules of grammar:
1. Always avoid alliteration.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague.
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 phrase 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. Don't be redundant. Don't use words more than necessary. It's highly superfluous.
13. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always spectacular.
16. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
17. One-word sentences? Elliminate.
18. Analogies are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be avoided.
20. Who needs rhetorical questions?
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