• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Pay particular attention to the last of these. It will keep you out of trouble.

If despite your best efforts to follow these rules, you find yourself inextricably engulfed in a grammatical quagmire, try these links to self-help resources and online writing guides:

• WWWebster (TM) Dictionary, based on Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (R) Dictionary, Tenth Edition.
• The Encyclopedia Britannica, available courtesy of The Washington Post.
• Guidelines for bibliographic citation in MLA and APA style, available courtesy of the Purdue University On-Line Writing Lab.
• William Strunk's Elements of Style, available courtesy of the Bartleby project.
• Jack Lynch's Grammar and Style Notes, an alphabetized miscellany of grammatical rules and explanations, comments on style, and suggestions on usage.
• Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, available courtesy of the Bartleby project.
• A Frequently Asked Questions list compiled by contributors to an e-mail copyediting listserve.
• My Virtual Reference Desk, an indexed gateway to reference resources on the Internet.
• The On-line Books Page, an indexed and linked list of thousands of books available online.
• The Voice of the Shuttle, a comprehensive web resource for humanities research, available courtesy of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

You can also look for an answer to your question in the Grammar Hotline Archives (© Nancy H. Margolis, 2002), which stores questions and responses in the following categories:

Questions on Capitalization Questions on Citation Questions on Editing Questions on Punctuation Apostrophes Colons Commas Hyphens Multiple Punctuation Periods Quotation Marks

Questions on Sentence Structure Questions on Spelling Questions on Typography Questions on Word Choice Adjectives Adverbs Conjunctions Nouns Prepositions Pronouns Verbs

Remember, too, that individualized writing assistance is available to NC State students in walk-in tutorials offered through Writing and Speaking Tutorial Services.

I'll miss the Grammar Hotline, but I'm not dropping off the face of the earth. Write to me at n.h.margolis@att.net.