Eve Shea remembers J.D. Salinger
Excerpt from a Salinger letter
J.D. Salinger (1919–2010)
On death and mourning, from The Catcher in the Rye
National Handwriting Day
With a sample
How to improve writing (no. 26)
A sentence from a New Yorker review
Churchill speeches fail exam
Computerized scoring has its limits
William Zinsser, writing advice
For writing in English as a second language or first language
How to improve writing (no. 25)
From a book on design, a sentence in need of help
The Coen brothers and typos
"[T]here's no typos in our scripts."
Review: Mark Garvey's Stylized
"Mark Garvey’s Stylized is a deeply affectionate, well reseached, and, yes, slightly and frankly obsessive account of The Elements of Style."
Make your own academic sentence
"The culture of post-capitalist hegemony functions as the conceptual frame for the legitimation of the image."
PUSH
An old metal sign, good advice for reading, writing, and teaching.
Carnival of Pen, Pencil, and Paper
Like it says, at Office Supply Geek
On "On the New Literacy"
So what do you think about the claim that “online media are pushing literacy into cool directions”? I, uh, don’t see it.
Montblanc's Gandhi pen
Ugh.
Paul McCartney's handwriting
From 1953
The Burt Britton Collection
Auction of self-portraits by actors, artists, athletes, musicians, photographers, and writers
Eraser Matches
A gift from my son
Carnival of pens, pencils, and paper
"At The Pen Addict ('. . . there are WORSE addictions, right?'), there's a carnival of pens, pencils, paper, and supplies."
Greeklish
"The growing use of Greeklish by schoolchildren is adversely affecting their spelling skills and may ultimately pose a threat to the Greek language, according to a recent study."
On letters and mailboxes
Excerpt from Slywy's piece on letters and mailboxes
Walter Benjamin on readers and writers
It is a truth universally acknowledged, sort of, that we are all writers now. Walter Benjamin’s observations suggest that we were all writers “then,” too.
Joyce Brabner on writing and recognition
In a 1997 interview, Brabner comments on writing and recognition
"How to e-mail a professor" in print
My #1 post in a college textbook
So gangsta
Graffiti from the University of Chicago Library
"Nil admirari in stone, the waiter"
Passage on waiters from the Goncourt brothers
How I blog
"I love the idea of 'a post' — small enough to fit in the hand, like a letter or card, but as short or long as it needs to be."
How to type ¢, é, and ß
How to type symbols, accents, and special characters
Proust's supplies
Nibs and ink
Fun with APA style
Amusing sample citations
Lexicographers and Twitter
"OUP lexicographers have been monitoring more than 1.5 million random tweets since January 2009 and have noticed any number of interesting facts about the impact of Twitter on language usage."