How to improve writing (no. 76)
I didn’t go looking for a sentence to improve this morning: this one, from David Brooks, presented itself as needing immediate help.
How to improve writing (no. 75)
Every time I look at Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, I end up rewriting one or more sentences.
How to improve writing (no. 74)
“Certainly, no artist as hugely successful as he has been can have struck a chord without owning a piece of his time.” Yuck.
Pencils in the news
The Guardian reports that increasing number of English schoolchildren are unable to hold a pencil properly. The reason: too much technology.
Flowers knows best
Father Knows Best and Betty Sue Flowers’s four-part model for a writer’s work: madman, architect, carpenter, judge.
That and which
From Bruce Ross-Larson’s Edit Yourself: A Manual for Everyone Who Works with Words, useful advice for solving the problem of a relative clause that doesn’t follow the noun it modifies.
Grammar in the writing center
To dismiss or defer a student’s questions about grammar is to do that student a disservice.
Long and short
How to arrange pairs and series. A writing tip from Bruce Ross-Larson’s Edit Yourself: A Manual for Everyone Who Works with Words.
A page-ninety test
A paragraph from Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury. Slack writing, even at 30% off.
Whose whom?
I’d bet a Happy Meal that Trump didn’t write this statement.
Robin Wright on words and sentences
A journalist and foreign correspondent comments on what makes for good writing.
How to improve writing (no. 73)
Today we have rearranging of parts. From a New York Times opinion piece , a sentence that needs improvement.
Timmy Martin, writer
“Where’s the pen and ink and good paper?”
How to improve writing (no. 72)
“The portfolio that works even when you aren’t.“
Perfectionism and its discontents
From the podcast Innovation Hub : Eugenia Cheng, mathematician, talks about perfectionism and diminishing returns.
iOS text editors
Brett Terpstra’s iOS text-editor roundup is an exhaustive guide to writing apps for the iPhone and iPad. One iOS writing app that I espec...
Inspiration for writing
Rachel Peden: “There were so many things that didn’t suit us that we had abundant practice in writing.”
One Alice Munro sentence
Nine of its fourteen words form prepositional phrases, but the sentence moves as quickly as the truck, or the air.
The 26 Old Characters
From the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company, a dowdy-world history of our alphabet and fountain pens.
Writing instruction
What does it mean to go through twelve or more years of schooling and not be able to recognize a sentence in your language — or a noun, or a verb? More than a little crazy.
”There’s no excuse for bad copyediting”
From the comic strip Dustin.
Bryan Garner on rules and writing
On writing and rules, those to follow and those to ignore.
A p@ge-ninety test
Reader, I bought it.
Coffee-and
Balzac’s writing equipment: special coffee, special paper, special pens.
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.
Bear, a writing app
A writing app of great simplicity, for macOS and iOS.
A page-ninety test
Redundancies, inelegant variations, slackness, and vague pseudo-profundities: this writer’s prose is, for me, unreadable.
Our alphabet and how it got that way
How many letters?
Joubert on writing
Writing too much, or not at all.
How to improve writing (no. 71)
Inflated diction, a weak “to be” verb, a nominalization.