How to improve writing (no. 10)
Too many nouns
Editing
From Jeremy Wagstaff's Loose Wire : I only recently realised, for example, that I’ve always been saying 'esconced' for some reason. Only yes...
Its and it's
Looking up my old neighborhood of Allston, Mass. (now being colonized by Harvard University), I was surprised to find the following: Peter V...
Raymond Carver's index cards
From Raymond Carver's essay "On Writing": Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. Someday I'l...
On handwriting and typing
W.H. Auden, from "Writing": Most people enjoy the sight of their own handwriting as they enjoy the smell of their own farts. Much as I loath...
The language of stamps
From tomorrow's New York Times : Every other day, when Janie Bielefeldt writes to her husband, who is deployed in Afghanistan, she places he...
Hemingway's typewriter
I'm reminded of the old Peterman catalogue, which affixed a famous name to most any object, but the following is for real--a typewriter used...
"The Mail Moment"
From a New York Times article by James Fallows, "Why the Internet Isn't the Death of the Post Office": The most touching artifact among the...
"Slow down and think"
Kids' thoughts about writing with fountain pens: Do you think writing with a fountain pen improves your penmanship? Why? "My handwriting is ...
Old and improved
”How to e-mail a professor,” improved.
Odes to autumn
October is a fine and dangerous season in America. . . . It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every cours...
The Elements of Style
Strunk and White's legendary "Elements of Style" was first published in 1959, and in the intervening decades, this little book on language a...
The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing
Thinking about The Elements of Style prompts me to say something about a book that to my mind is far more useful, Michael Harvey's The Nuts...
"Amish computing"
I'm getting so much spam. Hundreds of messages a day trying to seduce me by appealing to my darkest lusts and my greed. So I've gone back to...
Words in pixels
I tweaked a section of my post on how to e-mail a professor this weekend, for a reason that's interesting enough, I think, to note here. Be...
My version of Amish computing
Paul Ford's notion of "Amish computing" appeals strongly to me, especially in its emphasis on distraction-free writing. But I can't imagine...
How to improve writing (no. 11 in a series)
Educationese
I remember Thanksgiving
My family has kept up a Thanksgiving tradition for some years now, inspired by Joe Brainard's I Remember , a remarkable book of memory. I Re...
My other blog is a Moleskine
My longer posts to Orange Crate Art tend to begin in a Moleskine pocket notebook. Yes, my other blog is a Moleskine. (And no, I didn't nee...