I lay awake some night thinking about this.

I am literally crying I’m laughing so hard.

It’s like a guide to crime blogging written by Sherlock when he’s really pissed off about John’s last post.

This has to be satire. It wasn’t posted on April 1st, by any chance?

If it’s real it’s where “Said Is Dead” would like to take you if you’re not careful…

It was posted last december. 

Can someone please tell me how “… arched, arrowhead, ballerina, … , edge, fan-shaped, flared, …, lipstick-shaped, mountain-peak, … spoon-shaped, …, squared-oval (sqoval), stiletto” shaped nails look like? 

(bonus: “Make sure the nails match the hands. Would you want delicate nails on sinewy meat hooks? ” )

I went to the posted link and had a little rummage about. The following is IMO, so YMMV.

Some of the advice is sound, though like any other “list of helpful / alternative words” (including the original “Roget’s Thesaurus”) it needs a warning: “adjectives are like hot peppers, and should not be over-used. Two or even three are never better than one, if it’s the right one. Sometimes a bit of thought might show that none is best of all.”

However, I’ve seen all - ALL - of the sound advice in other places, mercifully unassociated with any loopier suggestions. The trick about writer-advice websites and posts (mine included) is recognising whether or not they’re useful, practical or even sensible, especially if you have to pay for the advice as a membership charge or buying a book.

There seems to be a lack of irony or even humour about this particular advice, because anyone with a modicum of either could never have written what follows without realising its essential silliness and then not writing it. Much of this has already been quoted above, but it needs to be shown in its original po-faced entirety to convey the sheer unconscious hilarity of the extract.

Use ‘hands’ too often, and the word will annoy readers. English offers a multitude of options. Analyze what the hands are doing and assign a noun that suits them. In addition to the following, check the Movement section for verbs you could convert into nouns.

Boo-boo soothers, bruisers, bunglers, clutchers, dukes, feelers, fever busters, fists, grabbers, ham hocks, hams, healers, killers, meat hooks, mitts, muffs, painkillers, paws, pokers, prestidigitators, punishers, scratchers, shadow puppeteers, slappers, spankers, stranglers, tarantulas, teasers, titillators, tranquilizers, vises, whackers

Boo-boo soothers? Presdigitators? TARANTULAS? I got it right when I thought of “said is dead” lists, another hydra-headed source of misplaced words and how to misuse them.

Also, as @thebibliosphere points out “why does it keep coming back to murder?” - not murder entirely, but of this list more than half imply the hands are a means of physical or sexual violence.

Some could be used as similes or metaphors, especially for fun or in a noir-ish style. Work out which for yourselves. Others should be ignored completely, and if I felt inclined I’d go looking for a verb that somehow conveys how active, forceful and final that ignoring should be. As it is…

“I say we take off and nuke the words from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

It’s too easy to imagine an inexperienced writer taking this advice at face value. I’ve already seen examples which, thanks to a similar “Use ‘said’ too often and the word will annoy readers…” pronouncement, used anything and everything EXCEPT “said”. It made their work… Let’s call it ‘idiosyncratic’ and say no more. James Joyce might have pulled it off. They didn’t. 

The suggestion of nouning verbs as another source of material makes it worse; that’s going to trip you more often than it helps you, because it can really get up some agent’s or editor’s noses. Their reaction is that if a writer has to warp existing words to say what they mean, they have an inadequate grasp of  basic vocabulary. Calling hands “fever busters” or “whackers” is not going to help the situation.

Nouning verbs should be done as carefully as horsing sheep.

There might be a law against it.