Luna del'Corvo

• Remember to never split an infinitive.
• The passive voice should never be used.
• Punctuate run-on sentences properly they are hard to read otherwise.
• Don't use no double negatives.
• Use the semi-colon properly, always use it where it is appropriate; and never where it isn't.
• Reserve the apostrophe for it's proper use and omit it when its not needed.
• Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
• No sentence fragments.
• Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
• Avoid commas, that are not necessary.
• If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a lot of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
• A writer must not shift your point of view.
• Give slang the elbow.
• Conversely, it is incumbent upon us to avoid archaisms.
• Don't overuse exclamation marks!!!!
• Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 onwards or more, to their antecedents.
• Hyphenate between sy-llables; avoid un-necessary hyphens.
• Write all adverbial forms correct.
• Writing carefully: dangling participles must be avoided.
• Steer clear of incorrect forms of verbs that have snuck in the language.
• Take the bull by the hand: always pick on the correct idiom and avoid mixed metaphors.
• Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
• Never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
• Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
• If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, resist hyperbole.
• Also, avoid awkward or affected alliteration.
• Don't string together too many prepositional phrases unless you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death.
• ""Avoid overuse of quotation marks.""""
• For Christ's sake don't offend your readers' sensibilities.
• Last but not least, avoid clichés like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

What concerns me is the proliferation, not just of nonsense and sloppy thinking per se, but of a particular kind of nonsense and sloppy thinking: one that denies the existence of objective realities, or (when challenged) admits their existence but downplays their practical relevance.

Social Text's acceptance of my article exemplifies the intellectual arrogance of Theory — meaning postmodernist literary theory — carried to its logical extreme. No wonder they didn't bother to consult a physicist. If all is discourse and "text," then knowledge of the real world is superfluous; even physics becomes just another branch of Cultural Studies. If, moreover, all is rhetoric and "language games," then internal logical consistency is superfluous too: a patina of theoretical sophistication serves equally well. Incomprehensibility becomes a virtue; allusions, metaphors and puns substitute for evidence and logic. My own article is, if anything, an extremely modest example of this well-established genre.