I think it's very important to separate a source's ideas from one's own. I also have been told multiple times that if a paragraph contains multiple facts from a particular source, just cite the source after the last fact explained from it. This prevents people from writing:
"Today there was a festival downtown (Source). 100 people went (Source). 75% of them said they had a great time (Source). More people say they will attend next year (Source)."
If it's all from the same source, listing it after each fact, if listed near each other, would be annoying and would make reading smoothly impossible! It's just very distracting. Granted, the choppy, blunt sentences are also distracting and could easily be blended together, but for the sake of the example I thought it worked. Anyway, in this situation I think the rules could be bent where the source was just cited at the end of the facts to avoid having "(Source)" interjected every few words.
I also think the rules for using the first word from your Works Cited page as an in-text citation can be bent. Sometimes someone could use a variety of articles written by the same author. In this case, using an in-text citation that was the first word from the Works Cited citing would be useless because you wouldn't be able to tell which article the person was referring to. So, this rule should be bent. If this were to happen I think the person should just write the name of the article as the in text citation. Although it is not necessarily consistent, this way would definitely be more clear in terms of multiple articles by a single author.
I also think that the rule for citing page numbers for web pages or internet sources is a pain; many websites don't include page numbers. So, the only thing you can really do is leave it out. The page rule is bendable because of this; with books or hardcopies, though, there are no excuses; page numbers should be used to correctly credit the information that was used.
The author's purpose of the material he/she is writing can allow the rule for a quotation or a phrase to be included in a sentence or structure where it does not grammatically make sense. I am a fan of correct grammar, but I think this rule can be altered if the author's purpose is to reflect a character with bad grammar, or perhaps a narrator. This way the story seems authentic and realistic, and it is even fun to read. Mark Twain is a classic author who would bend this rule for the sake of a realistic or defining dialect, and I think it's great. I also just read a book about a girl who grew up in the streets of a city. If the girl, also the narrator and now an adult, portrayed her dialect as grammatically perfect with no random sentences that sounded wrong, the book would have been totally different and much less intriguing.
One last rule, although not necessarily wrong, as Stedman states, that can be bent is the starting and ending paragraphs with a quotation. Although blurting a random quotation would be confusing and ineffective, sometimes using a powerful one and then elaborating on it correctly can be attention-grabbing. Ending a paragraph, or even a paper, with a quote can also be very sentimental. However, you would not just end a paragraph with
He lived in South Africa for the rest of his life. "Random quote by Mandela."
Instead, you could ease into it
He lived in South Africa for the rest of his life, claiming he would "forever instill peace among different races and would never give up."
For the record, that quote was made up, although it does sound like something Nelson Mandela would say (or at least an idea he would have.) But ending a sentence with this is a smooth ending, perhaps wrapping up a paper about Mandela's life story and experiences battling with apartheid. Sometimes ending with a quote can be sentimental and even inspirational.
Although there are plenty of rules that can bend concerning a writer's purpose, publication space, and audience, some can not be. Statistics or data, for example, can not just be included without giving credit to the source you received it from. There are many other examples of rules that are strict of that can bend under given circumstances.
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