ONE. Begin with a love of language and a fascination with words. Accept the artistic challenge inherent in choosing the appropriate sentence structure and the precise words that best express your ideas. Value the English language for its richness and variety, qualities which enable us to communicate both clearly and creatively. Besides, language lovers live longer. (Say that quickly five times.)

TWO. Decide upon your audience and your purpose. These considerations will guide the selections you make in word choice, tone and style. Clarify for yourself any assumptions you are making about your potential readers. Find tactful ways to explain terms they may not know, and provide background essential for their understanding. If your purpose is to entertain, you may opt for a breezy style and exaggerate for humorous effect. If your purpose is to inform, however, you will probably employ an objective tone and take pains not to exaggerate. As you edit early drafts of your writing, keep your audience and purpose in mind. Avoid pretentious diction and esoteric jargon; they turn readers off.

THREE. Understand the difference between style and conventions. Some so-called "style manuals" would be better described as references on usage (the social acceptability of words or idioms) or mechanics (punctuation, spelling, abbreviations, format, etc.) Strunk and White's classic work The Elements of Style mingles these categories, but it's still useful. When we admire a lively writing style, we mean something beyond mere correctness or social acceptability. To be sure, great stylists have mastered the conventions of grammar and mechanics; they can even break "rules" because they know them well enough to spoof them. But their work shows personality, originality, and a command of language.

FOUR. Know the grammar that applies to writing (e.g. subject-verb agreement, pronoun agreement) but be open to reasonable changes such as the use of gender-inclusive nouns and pronouns. Use judgment when deciding whether it's more important to break an old grammar rule, defy a social convention, or do what comes most naturally to you. Learn how to recast sentences so that your style reads smoothly. Awkward, unnatural, wordy constructions, even if they're grammatically correct, must go.

FIVE. Be sensitive to changing usage, not enslaved by archaic "absolutes" that no longer make sense (if they ever did). Forget about split infinitives unless they seem awkward. (Split happens.) Discard the notion that "hopefully" can't modify a whole clause (Hopefully, we can then turn to more important issues). Kill in effigy those misguided mentors who you never to begin a sentence with "and" or "but." (But don't overdo these transitional words.) Use your head! Trust your judgment!

SIX. Prize clarity over all other virtues in informative prose. Publishers' guidelines for writers invariably place clarity on their short list of desirables.

SEVEN. Conciseness, also called "tight writing," is valued more than ever as printing grows more expensive. Edit out wordiness, restatements (except in summaries), and redundant expressions. Also, learn to pack information into a sentence by using parentheses, dashes, and compound elements.

EIGHT. Find the sentence structure that best conveys your ideas and your chosen emphasis.

• Parallel sentence structure can emphasize contrast: "Men are from Mars; women are from Venus."
  
  
• Delayed predication can build suspense to emphasize the concluding statement: "Tobacco industry executives, despite all their protests to the contrary, knew very well that nicotine is addictive."
  
  
• In complex sentences, the main idea belongs in the main clause: "Although we conducted several experiments, we could not replicate the results of the first." (Notice the fuzzy effect when the dependent clause and the independent clause are reversed: "Although we could not replicate the results of the first experiment, we conducted several others.")

NINE. Choose the exactly right word and use it with precision. Don't write "viable" when you mean "feasible." Consider the root meanings of synonyms such as "dispel, disperse, disseminate, dissipate, scatter, circulate." Don't depend on a thesaurus alone but use it in connection with a couple of good hardbound dictionaries such as Webster's New World Dictionary or American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary. (Paperback dictionaries and computer programs don't provide enough of this kind of help.) Note especially the illustrative sentences showing how a word (or one of its senses) is used in context. Refer to the synonymies (marked SYN) to distinguish the fine shades of meaning within groups of synonyms. Dictionaries differ in the synonymies they choose to provide, so consult more than one.

TEN. Vivid verbs and specific nouns energize your style. Weak verbs such as forms of "be" and "have" dullify it (hey, I coined a word!). Prefer active voice (subject doing the acting) over passive voice (subject acted upon) except when the subject is unknown or you want to stress the receiver of an action (e.g."Hodges was killed in Vietnam."). Sentences beginning "There is" or "There are" can almost always be rewritten with a livelier verb. Compare these sentences:

• There was a dispute over textbooks at the board meeting.
  
  
• A dispute over textbooks disrupted the board meeting.

ELEVEN. Use technology with care. It can't replace professional judgment. Grammar checkers may ruin your style by trying to save it. (Mine once chided me, after I quoted Edward E. Hale, "The adjective hale should come before the noun "E.") Yet I use the software program Grammatik for counting words, analyzing sentence length, calculating approximate grade levels, and flagging instances of passive voice to reconsider. Spelling checkers catch some typos and speed up proofreading, but beware of technopropisms (I coined that term too) such as this one by a college student: "Someday blacks and whites, Jews and genitals will all hold hands." Do your own editing, preferably after letting it "cool" a while, to spot opportunities for improvement. For the next draft, a fresh pair of eyes may catch unclear sentences or errors you have missed. Be willing to rewrite; all good writing is rewriting. But stop before you get sick of the project. Perfection is a worthy goal, but "good enough" is better.

TWELVE. Vary your sentence structure to avoid monotony. Keep control of the core in longer sentences. Short ones hit hard. Consider the sound, rhythm, and connotations of words. Read your work aloud.

THIRTEEN. Colorful figures of speech enliven style; cliches deaden it. How dead is a doornail? Would young readers today comprehend "a stitch in time"? Better avoid those. But not all old expressions are taboo; some cliches survive just because they are apt, like "tip of the iceberg." On the other hand, some new fads, like "the bottom line" quickly become trite. Try making original similes, or give a new twist to an old expression. Analogies may also help clarify a concept, as Alexander Pope's witty couplet illustrates: "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance/ As they move easiest who have learned to dance."