ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews some basic aspects of English style necessary for technical writing. It offers a list of suggestions much in the form of the classic book The Elements of Style, written by William Strunk Jr. The chapter discusses the short list of rules and suggestions regarding grammar and style. The sentences in a paragraph should all hang together somehow. A declarative sentence makes a statement. A declarative sentence needs a subject and a predicate. Inverted sentence arrangements are possible but are best used with care. A run-on sentence will take one of two forms. In the first form, independent thoughts are smeared together without punctuation. In the second form, independent thoughts are spliced together with a comma but without a conjunction. Sentence variety is an important aspect of good classical composition. Punctuation often determines the meaning assigned to a sentence. When a participle starts a sentence, it should be followed immediately by some indication of the agent.
