Seven Stylistic Sins

The Elements Of Style WIKI

When writers misuse words or expressions, they reveal themselves to be unprofessional or uninformed.
In The Elements of Style
(New York: Macmillian, 1959) page 33, author William R. Strunk identifies many common style gaffes. Here are seven he recommends avoiding:

All right. Idiomatic in familiar speech as a detached phrase in the sense, "Agreed," or "Go ahead," or "O.K." Always written as two words; there is no such
word as alright.

Effect. As noun, means result; as verb, means to bring about, accomplish (not to be confused with affect, which means "to influence").

Farther, further. The two words are commonly interchanged, but there is a distinction worth observing: farther serves best as a distance word, further as
a time or quantity word. You chase a ball farther than the other fellow; you pursue a subject further.

Imply. Infer. Not interchangeable. (Editor's note: Per
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, fourth edition
at www.questia.com, "When we say that a speaker or sentence implies something, we mean that it is conveyed or suggested without being stated outright: Inference,
on the other hand, is the activity performed by a reader or interpreter in drawing conclusions that are not explicit in what is said.")

Irregardless. Should be regardless. The error results from failure to see the negative in -less, and from a desire to get it in as a prefix, suggested by
such words as irregular, irresponsible, and, perhaps especially, irrespective.

One of the most. Avoid this feeble formula. "One of the most interesting developments of modem science is, etc"; "Switzerland is one of the most interesting
countries of Europe." There is nothing wrong in this; it is simply threadbare.

The foreseeable future. A cliché and a fuzzy one. How much of the future is foreseeable? Ten minutes? Ten years? Any of it? By whom is it foreseeable? Seers?
Experts? Everybody?