Alice - I just read your Rules for Writers; they put me in remembrance of the following true story:

My son was in the 7th grade and was assign a year long project on the history, geography, etc. of Greece. One evening early on he came to me and wanted me to read his preliminary draft of the first page. It went something like this--

Greece is a very old country in southern Europe sticking out into the Mediterranean Sea and it is a pennisula and it is made up of many islands whichic have a lot of mountains and on and on to the middle of the page (period). The people of Greece came from whereever they came from and settled into various communities which became city-states which did whatever they did to the bottom of the page (period).

Lovingly, and in my most paternal mode, I tried to explain how he had a lot of good ideas, here, but they needed to be separated with commas, semicolons and a few more periods. I also suggested that he, perhaps, had 3 or 4 paragraphs instead of 2 long sentences. He, just on the brink of teen-agedness was upset, and told me that he wrote like that all the time, and the teacher never complained [that's a whole 'nother story].

The next day I bought an English diagnostic test for him. He was required to do the work in any section he did not pass.

Flash forward 10 years; he graduated college 'magna cum laude', PBK. He had started as an English major, but degreeed in Philosophy.