Rules Were Made to be Broken

There’s been a lot of chatter on one of my loops about different “rules” that when carried to the extreme ruin a good piece of writing. The specific discussion was around the use of “to be” verbs such as “was” being passive. Someone indicated they ran across an editor who said the use of the verb “was” would result in her rejecting the manuscript. The general concensus was it depends on the rule, the writer and the publishing house.

The writing “rule” that drives me crazy is “show don’t te...