Who are you going to trust, google or public school teachers who could keep 40 kids in line and help them to board scores in the in top one tenth of one percentile?
[Minor hijack: this is why I love technical writing. The allowed verb tenses are so crisp and brutally simple. Pure Strunk and White.]
Strunk and White? The enduring adulation for that compendium of vague nothings and head-scratching canards is a fine illustration of some sad human flaw. If you wanted to learn about the English language, you’d be just as well off with Fonseca and Carolino. I’d speak more bluntly, but this thread would have to, by some chance, be moved to the Pit first.
Have you ever read technical manuals? I have to tell you, “Omit unnecessary words” and “Use the active voice” should be tattooed backwards on some people’s eyeballs, particularly with “unnecessary” emphasized.
“Be consistent” should be tattooed on their brains; the way verb tenses, voices, and moods float all over the map is just amazing. How can some one use the present, future, and past tense for activities that take place at the same time *in the same sentence? * How can they do that?
And conditionals. Shoulds and woulds and coulds abound. Mays and mights are used interchangeably. [insert howl of frustration here].
Shall. Some use it to imply ‘must’, some to imply ‘will’, but most just to imply either.
I swear, Humpty Dumpty must be the patron saint of technical writers.