I am toying with the idea of creating my own writing handbook for freshman composition. It would take form as a blog: https://wrules4writing.wordpress.com/
The goal is to present some of the rules of writing in a straightforward, accessible way–and to save students $80 or so bucks. Hopefully I can be a little funny along the way.
No doubt, my blog is oversimplified (and under construction). If anyone has any advice or criticism for me, I am all ears. I think I’ll have to create a table of contents (with hyperlinks) as I add chapters.
Cheers,
McFeats
The Untimely Typewriter:Daily Writings Against the Tides of Distraction 
Nice start! If your audience includes freshmen, you might consider an introduction to terms such as “subject,” “object,” “verb,” “pronoun,” and so on. Everybody needs the simple stuff explained to them at least once, and from what I’ve read, a significant number of college students are arriving with a shaky grasp of basic grammatical concepts. (I wouldn’t start with a traditional glossary; the more conversational tone you’ve adopted so far is good.) Of course, students who don’t need these basics can skip the section.
My one comment comes out of my experience as a technical writer and editor, so you may decide it doesn’t represent a necessary correction—but I’ve worked with plenty of documents that are formal but use “you” in an instructional context. So I think your absolute prohibition of “you” in formal settings is too strong. If I were writing for an audience of lab technicians, I might well write “You should splice the DNA before moving forward.” (Actually, I would more likely write “We recommend that you splice the DNA before you proceed,” but that’s beside the point.)
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Thanks for the feedback, John. I’ll add an explanation of parts of a sentence. Good point there.
Also a good point about manuals. I’ll have to be more specific. I’m thinking of essays.
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Nice work. Seems like you will have much more work rather than relying on a textbook, but I think the results will be more successful. Reading the material as you have written is much easier to follow and use than a dry boring textbook.
About the only writing I’ve done besides news and ad copy has been technical, but unlike John our style was to avoid using you as much as possible and use one. I think it was due to the ERA that passed in PA about the time I started doing machine operation manuals. Perhaps using one satisfies the he, she, or whatever personal pronouns which some are now having problems using.
I also remember a newspaper column I really enjoyed. The fellow who wrote it was either a linguist or college professor. One of his, and my, pet peeves was improper use of quotes and hanging quotes. Seems people don’t know how to use any emphasis but an improper quote. I wish I’d have kept that column.
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Bill, the columnist may have been Edwin Newman. He was a journalist, but achieved additional fame in 1974 with his book Strictly Speaking, He had a syndicated column that often covered grammatical topics. You might enjoy http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/, “The ‘Blog’ of ‘Unnecessary’ Quotation Marks.” It’s been around for 15 years and provided me with a lotta laughs over its snarky commentary, particularly at the beginning.
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Thank you, Bill. I’ll be able to make improvements over time. “One” is a tricky one. It works well for academic writing but can come off as snooty for mainstream writing. In general, I prepare my students for the latter, since most don’t become academics. I remember using the royal “we” for my Master’s thesis. I’ll never read that thing again. The horror, the horror.
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My bête noir among phrases is “As we have seen,…” No, buddy. You said it. That doesn’t mean I “see” it.
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Looks like an ambitious and super-useful project! Just one note for now: in the pronouns section, I don’t think your explanation of “cisgender” is right. Cisgender means non-transgender: in other words, someone who identifies with the gender that person was assigned at birth. “Individuals who don’t identify as cisgender” would include trans men and trans women, who do want to be called “he” or “she.” “They” is more for people who are nonbinary, who aren’t comfortable with either “he” or “she.”
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Thanks for the correction, Richard. It seems like I always need a refresher.
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