Avoid beginning sentences with words that you'd hear from a pulpit, a parent, or a professor.

Lose the excessively prescriptive and the moralizing; they can come off as condescending. Watch the use of …

• Don't forget …
• Never …
• Don't…
• Remember to …
• Avoid … (LOL)

And one so awful I can barely type it:

• Always remember to …

I know, I know … I've broken this advice many times in this book. I broke it in the first line of this very chapter, 80 words ago.

Warning you of danger without using never or avoid is hard to … uh, avoid.

That's true whether you're warning someone of the possibility of actual danger (Never use this curling iron near a bubble bath!) or a metaphorical one (Avoid Weblish!). (I see you, Chapter 35.)

Prescriptive, how-to instructional writing is one thing; dogmatic, bellowing copy is another.

The line between helpful/preachy and educational/flat-out bossy isn't easy to define.

But in our own work, let's be aware that a line does exist. And try—as I have tried here—not to cross it.