Punctuation: the difference between ‘Let’s cook mother’ and ‘Let’s cook, mother’.

While celebrating Punctuation Day on September 24, Ashford’s resident punctuation enforcer stumbled across an old notepad. The faded jotter, whose tatty pages are stained with ancient coffee cup rings, dates from our Editor’s previous life as a newspaper hack. We won’t tell you exactly how old it is – suffice to say it includes Val Doonican’s autograph and some very shaky notes from an interview with George Best. (Google them, or ask your Grandma.)

But we digress… the point of this tale is that the old notebook contains the following Rules for writers. They may be from last century but most of the rules still apply. Perhaps we should add some new ones for the SMS generation. All suggestions are welcome!