> The third stage is when you know the rules so well you can start breaking them, in ways which make your writing MORE functional and beautiful instead of LESS.

My sister was always a master of essays, and I've questioned her before on how she got high grades on her papers while breaking such rules as not beginning a sentence with a conjunction, not ending a sentence with a preposition, not splitting infinitives, and so forth. Her reply was that once teachers know that YOU know the proper rules, you can break them. The key lies in breaking them well. So far, I haven't been able to perfect this, but it's an interesting goal. To me, writing that follows every grammar rule can sometimes be too obstructive; the simplest sentence may need to be expanded in an unwieldy fashion. The reader is then left with the impression that there are too many words for too simple an idea. Although I'm sure my English teachers would dispute me on this, sometimes elegance in a sentence should be a higher priority than following arbitrary rules.

Counterpoint