Promiscuous or reckless use of the superlative is absolutely the worst mistake a writer can make.

You need to be very careful of superlatives. It’s okay to state as your thesis, for example, “Ron Santo was the greatest third baseman of all time,” and then defend that position. But if you use a superlative as part of a larger point, you risk the reader’s losing sight of the point you’re trying to make. For example, if you write, “The ‘bad girl’ who corrupts the simple man is a common theme in opera, as we see in ‘Carmen,’ the most famous opera in history.” Here, you notice that the thesis statement is hard to dispute, but the supplemental statement (that “Carmen” is the most famous opera in history) is highly debatable, and distracts the reader. He’s now so busy saying, “Wait a minute: I think ‘Aïda,’ and ‘The Barber of Seville’ are more famous. This writer’s full of manure.” And thus you’ve lost him.

Some people insist that it’s against the rules of good writing to end any sentence with a preposition. Sir Winston Churchill famously disagreed: “That is the sort of pedantry up with which I will not put!”

I agree with Churchill. It’s okay to end a sentence with a preposition, if you think the sentence reads better that way. But in many cases a preposition at the end of a sentence looks awkward, and in many cases the word is superfluous. For example, “Where’s the library at?” might be better expressed as “Where’s the library?”

On the other hand, I’ve seldom heard so elegant a question as that of the little boy, about to be read to sleep by his father as was the custom between them, protesting his father’s choice of material: “What did you bring that book I don’t want to be read to out of up for?”

That’s a standard euphemism for “I don’t like it,” or “I don’t understand it,” or “I’ve never seen the like of it.” But it seems to me that if something’s different, it has to be different from something else — or different than something else, or different to something else. Which is correct: “different from,” “different than,” or “different to”? I would eliminate “than,” first-off, because “than” implies a difference in quantity or excellence, not a general difference. “To,” in this context, strikes me as antiquated. Hundreds of years ago, we might have said, “He’s like to a woman”; the modern preference is “He’s like a woman.” So, according to the Joseph Dobrian Manual Of Style, “different from” is preferred; “different to” is tolerated; “different than” is abominated.

Some writers misuse the word “literally,” asserting that some dramatic event or other literally happened, when it’s plain from the context that it only happened figuratively. For example, “She literally stuck a knife in my heart and twisted it.”

She did? Then why aren’t you dead, you stupid Schlemiel?

Apparently, “literally” is thus misused because the writer thinks it’s a way of emphasizing the egregiousness of the event, or behavior, or conditions, that he’s describing. If that’s what he thinks, he has deceived himself.

Writers should know how to use sentence fragments effectively. Some teachers insist that you should never use them, but I disagree. Sentence fragments arguably break the rules of English, but they can be useful tools.

In a letter to a friend, or in a humorous essay or a piece of creative writing, you might want to use sentence fragments for emphasis, to make your writing a little punchier: “She sings Italian arias. Off-key all the way.” But this kind of writing will probably not impress anyone if you use it in a business communication. For business, always use complete sentences: “She sings Italian arias, but she’s off-key all the way.” A sentence fragment like “Great seeing you!” is permissible in informal conversation or correspondence, but in a business letter you should say, “It was great to see you.”

Sentence fragments are like cuss words. If you use them carelessly and promiscuously, people will think you’re a poor speaker and writer. If you use them deliberately, judiciously, and rarely, they can enhance your message instead of detracting from it. So there.