Rule zero: break any of these rules sooner than do anything outright nonsensical

In his essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell proposed several rules for writing clearly: avoid dead metaphors, cut out unnecessary words, use the active rather than the passive tense and so on.

I think that the most important of these was Rule Six: ‘Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.’

In fact, I think that this rule is so important that those of us in the technology architecture profession ought to promote a modified version of it to Rule Zero, and let it stand at the head of any list of rules: ‘Break any of these rules rather than do anything outright nonsensical.’