The most repeated instruction in creative writing is usually explained badly. What it actually asks you to do is give up a particular kind of adjective.

English puts adjectives before the noun in a fixed sequence. Most of the world’s languages do neither. This is what learners are actually up against.

“He walked slowly and quietly into the room” has two modifiers doing a job one verb could do better. The adjective is often a symptom, not the problem.

Happier, but more careful. Simpler, but more modern. The rule is about syllables, except when it is about something else entirely.

Frugal or stingy. Confident or arrogant. Determined or stubborn. The same behaviour, three verdicts, and the choice is never neutral.

Very, really, quite, rather, somewhat. Most of them subtract force from the word they are attached to, and the good ones are the ones nobody notices.

The distinction is worth observing and worth knowing the history of, because it was never a description of English. It was one man’s preference that stuck.

You can say a mere formality. You cannot say the formality is mere. A small group of adjectives refuses to move, and knowing which ones saves some very odd sentences.

“Walking through the door, the smell hit me.” The smell was not walking. English attaches an opening phrase to whatever comes next, whether you meant it to or not.

“Avoid the passive” is the most repeated writing rule in English, and the people repeating it frequently cannot identify one.