Humorous rules for writing
For many years lists of humorous rules for writing have circulated around academia, offices and the internet. The humour depends on each rule contradicting the very advice it gives, the epitome of which is 'Don't use no double negatives.'The earliest recorded source is a list published by science editor George L. Trigg in 1979, and a similar list was published in the same year by William Safire.
Both Trigg and Safire credit others with having collected or contributed the rules they published and therefore neither should be considered the originator.
Since the growth of the internet, many variants of these lists have appeared as people have added new rules. The original lists appear below, together with a further (uncredited) list of additional rules.
George L. Trigg
William Safire
Additional rules
