The name for a set of rules of English invented by my high school English teacher. Almost as useful a set of grammar instructions as Strunk and White are for writing, if not quite as comprehensive. Violating any rule in a paper led to one full letter grade downvote.

1)Thou shalt not spell separate with three e's.

2) Thou shalt not misuse principle and principal or effect and affect.

3) My personal favorite. "Quote is a verb. "Quotation" is a noun. Learn the difference. You quote a person. You write or repeat a quotation. Currently misused by most.

4) i before e except after c, or when sounded as a as in neighbor and weigh. There are ELEVEN exceptions in the english language. Learn them. Exceptions to the i before e part: seize, either, weird, height, their, surfeit, foreign, leisure, counterfeit, forfeit, and neither. (If either leisure foreigner seizes weird heights, neither forfeits counterfeits. YOU make it into a sentence.) The exceptions to the except after c part: concience, science, species, and sufficient.

5) Thou shalt not make more than 3 spelling errors on any one page. (This is now obsolete, because of spellcheckers. Amended to Thou shalt not make ANY spelling errors. Subclause: Thou shalt still proofread! Your poor, overworked and abused computer does not know the difference between there and their, field and filed or too, to and two.)

And lastly, but most importantly:
6) Thou shalt not mix up its and it's. "Its" is the possessive of it; "It's" is the contraction of "it is". Misuse them, and you will instantly become a mindless newt.

that is all

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