Guidelines for writing

I've been thinking a lot about effective writing and communication within academia the past few weeks, which is why this post from Ross McKenzie's blog grabbed my attention. He's also posted other links to guidelines in the past, such as this one for writing good Physical Review Letters (PRL) papers.

I think that it would be a good exercise to create my own list of guidelines when writing papers. Or, for that matter, it might be a good exercise for anyone in academia to do so. Having these ideas down in print, as opposed to remaining vaguely defined in my mind, might make them more concrete and allow me to better define what I mean by the quality of a paper.