These rules create visually pleasing curves that are easy to manipulate. You can break these rules and get curves that have fewer points, but they will be very

These rules create visually pleasing curves that are easy to manipulate. You can break these rules and get curves that have fewer points, but they will be very tough to tweak. Break these rules and you will pay for it in more time spent when you need to change things. You can make an analogy to programming rules that tell you to eschew excessive cleverness - sure, it may be more succinct, but are you gonna be able to edit it later? What about the person who comes in once you've left and has to deal with it? (These are also guidelines, I do not obsessively follow these precisely; to be quite honest I mostly avoid using Illustrator's Pen tool for the organic shapes I mostly draw - but if I need to tweak a path, I'll use these rules and a couple other tools to quickly modify where the points are along a path, and do it easily.)