To recap from my quick blog series, here are the five things I'm not losing sleep over:
1. More than v. over
2. Question headlines
3. Repetition
4. Abbreviating state names
5. Starting sentences or paragraphs with conjunctions
I didn't write the blog series in an effort to change anyone's mind on these "rules." My goal was to challenge you to think about what you're spending your precious time on.
In a perfect world, we'd have tons of time to sweat every single piece of punctuation and every word choice. But we live in a reality, and there are too many things demanding our attention. Something has to give.
I'm not encouraging you to sell your copy editing soul and give up on quality. But I do want you to challenge the value of some rules. Do they matter to readers? Or do they matter because they were written in stone stylebook tablets during ancient times?
There are a lot of things I wanted to put on the list, including the singular "they." And I'm pretty close to jumping on the whom/who interchangeable bandwagon (I confess that's mostly because I have to think about it each time). I also dream of a world with just one effect/affect spelling.
But I'm interested in hearing from you. What rules are you willing to let go?
Up next week: Five things I AM losing sleep over
