Writing it and changing it
John Kander: “The ideas can be terrible, and nobody is a bad person because they have it. So you write it, and then you change it.”
Editing in Zits
Say “Thanks, Mom.”
“Lane Greene on Editing”
An especially good episode of the BBC podcast Word of Mouth : “Lane Greene on Editing.”
Too many ands?
When Paul Romer of the World Bank criticized the Bank staff’s writing and called for shorter, clearer documents, he pointed specifically to excessive use of and and insisted that the word account for not more than 2.6% of a Bank report.
Speed v. accuracy
A fortune cookie, revised.
Draft, draft, draft, draft
John McPhee on revision.
How to improve writing (no. 12 in a series)
From 28 syllables to 16