For casual students of English grammar, there’s a set of hard and fast rules no writer can ever hope to escape. A singular noun must be paired with a singular verb; the Subject-Verb Agreement is the backbone of every sentence. To break these grammatical rules is tantamount to blasphemy and could easily send a writer to pariah status in the blink of an eye.
True, a lot of grammatical rules are here to stay. You still can’t go around passing off phrases as sentences, and — as far …

Writers can be a rather frumpy lot. We tend to hold on to things we believe are “correct” or “appropriate”, in the same way that the Grammar Nazi believe modernizing the Queen’s language is sacrilege. We hold on to things that we learned from our teachers, mentors, literary idols. We tend to find solace in age old practices, thinking that we can never go wrong as long as we stay true to these time-tested adages.
Unfortunately, that’s not quite true. Here are some myths we might have …