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Prefer active to passive sentence constructions Where possible, you should prefer active sentence constructions over passive ones. Let’s briefly compare: Active: “The dog bites the bone.” Passive (a): “The bone is bitten.” Passive (b): “The bone is bitten by the dog.” In the active construction, the subject of the sentence (i.e. thing doing the action:

Myth: Paragraph transitions should be placed at the ends of paragraphs We might guess that this common misconception comes from a desire for students to be forward-looking. As such, we can hazard a guess that the rule, “paragraph transitions should always happen at the ends of paragraphs,” is a provisional one taught when students are introduced to

Myth: It’s an error to split infinitives An infinitive is one uninflected form of a verb, and it’s easy to spot. To go, to say, to wonder, to ride, to share—these are all examples of infinitives, and you will recognize plenty of them in your own writing, no doubt. Usually (though not always), and infinitive verb

Myth: It’s incorrect to start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, for, nor, yet, so) This rule is a provisional one, meant to help beginning writers to see the differences between oral and written communication. Whereas in speech we very often use conjunctions, especially “and” and “but,” in text a writer’s overuse of conjunctions

Myth: It’s incorrect to start a sentence with “because” Another provisional rule, the maxim that no sentence should begin with “because” is likely the result of a teacher’s frustration with sentence fragments. The following, for example, is a grammatical mistake called a sentence fragment: “Because she told me to leave.” This is a sentence fragment due