Just Slightly Contrarian: This Ain't Literature You're Writing

Don’t use a semicolon; that confuses people. They don’t know what to do with it. Is a semicolon a comma or a period?

Use short paragraphs, mostly. Use some long paragraphs. Use a variety. Don’t get stuck in a deadly routine. Use underlining. Use bold type. Use sentences that begin with action verbs.

And be careful with periods, because a period brings a thought to an end, and that’s what you want to avoid sometimes in your quest to keep the readers moving on and on and on. That’s why at the end of a paragraph, of course, you traditionally use a period. But then, as I mentioned, you begin the next paragraph with a word connector. Also, you can end a paragraph this way …