Welcome once again, writers! Welcome to another Monday installment of Being a Better Writer, a weekly guide to all things writing for over ten years!

Now, before we dive into today’s post, I want to start with a little reminder: Being a Better Writer is provided free of charge and free of advertising—despite a few places’ strong encouragement to the contrary. Instead, BaBW relies on Patreon Support! If Being a Better Writer has been helpful to you over the years, please consider heading on over to the Patreon Page and supporting. Or, if you’d rather not give money via Patreon, consider purchasing one of the many books on the Books page.

Please consider it. Creating new installments of Being a Better Writer each week does take a significant amount of time, and again, features no advertisements, pop-ups, page sponsors (unless you count the books and works we talk about over the course of either the post or the news blurbs at the start) or subscription requirements. It’s free to anyone, and has been used as a resource by everyone from individual writers looking to improve their craft to teachers of collegiate courses and higher education.

So, if you can spare it, or if you’re one of those college professors that has been sending traffic here via your students from a syllabus, please consider supporting the page. Or if you’re a student who’s found Being a Better Writer helpful, please consider the same. Without advertising, the only return I see as the creator is Patreon or book sales.

And I kind of despise advertising and popups. The last thing I want is for my site to be dominated by full-page ads breaking up the text, covering the screen, or doing one of a dozen other ways ads shove themselves in your face right now. Please support the site so that it can stay far away from that.

Okay, now that I’ve sufficiently prodded, let’s shift gears and get back to writing. Today we’re talking about a frequently controversial topic, and one that reared its head once again for me personally (hence why it ended up on Topic List #24). We’re talking about rule breaking.

What rules, you might ask? Well, hit that jump, and let’s find out.