Self-Referential Statements

They sometimes affirm, sometimes negate themselves.*

“It was when I asked the Queen if she ever got bored, and she replied: ‘Yes, but I never say so.’ Nicolas Sarkozy

I'm not the type of person who likes to categorise people. Jennifer Aniston Obs Aug 24 08

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all. Winston Churchill

The meek shall inherit the earth (if that’s all right with you). The Rev David Grieve

These are positively the last words of Harriet Martineau. (They were allegedly: "I see no reason why the existence of Harriet Martineau should be perpetuated.")

A metaphor is a dangerous tool in the wrong hands.
All cliches contain a grain of truth.
All generalisations are false.
As I told you yesterday, I’m not in the habit of repeating myself.

English is the de facto lingua franca.
Eschew obfuscation.

This [insert social evil here] means we have lost all sense of right and wrong! (If we had, you couldn’t disapprove.)

This literally fabulous piece… Michael Wood on the Sutton Hoo helmet
This not a sentence.
This sentence no verb.
To hell with superstition!
Today's words to avoid include "trope" and "meme". @HughPearman
You don’t catch me being self-righteous!

Grammer Made Easy in Twenty-Three Steps

1. Don't abbrev.
2. Check to see if you any words out.
3. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.
4. About sentence fragments.
5. When dangling, you shouldn’t use participles.
6. Don't use no double negatives.
7. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.
8. Just between you and I, case is important.
9. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.
10. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.
11. Its important to use apostrophe's right.
12. It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.
13. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.
14. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized.
15. also a sentence should begin with a capital and end with a period
16. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.
17. In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.
18. Watch out for irregular verbs which have creeped into our language.
19. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.
20. Avoid unnecessary redundancy.
21. A writer mustn't shift your point of view.
22. Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it.
23. A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.
24. Avoid cliches like the plague.

* Just trying to write like Samuel Johnson.