Style and Rules

The English language has many rules and exceptions to the rules. When talking, you can get away with quite a bit, but when writing, one must be very careful. But how careful must I be? At what point am I writing how a speak vs. writing how the rules tell me.

I've heard several times, "When you know the rules well enough, you can break them." I understand that grammar is important, but some word choices are hard to deal with. One rule is using "over" in the place of "more than." Even though "more than" should be used more often than "over", I strongly believe that people say "over" much more than "more than". This is just one of the many examples. Some words, unbeknown to me, seem to be the best word to describe a situation. Though it may be accurate, I don't know what the word is. Sometimes the simple word works best.

All I want to say, is that you don't need to use big words if it's not you. Write so I can understand. Don't distract with words that your desired audience can't even pronounce. Use punctuation correctly, to help enhance meaning, but don't go overboard. Some rules can be broken for stylistic reasons, while others are just plain necessary.