Reading time: Just over 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: ambivert. I recently hosted a birthday dinner for my brother-in-law, Doug. Over the meal we started talking about extroversion and introversion. Doug is an engineer but a […]
What’s an ambivert? Read More »
Looking for some book suggestions in time for Christmas? Here’s my roundup based on my reading so far this year. My habit is to post for you the names of all the books I’ve read, twice a year. Last June, I told you about the 27 titles I’d read by that point. Here is a
Recommended books: Christmas 2013 Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles of interest to writers. Today I discuss the book Punctuation..? published by the UK company User Design… When I very briefly worked in book publishing many years ago, colleagues
Book review: Punctuation..? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute A great way to improve your writing is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. I comment today on one written by Michael Pollan. Thanks to the urging of my email buddy, Bob, I am now reading the
What looks very much like a sly smile… Read More »
Reading time: About 1.5 minutes I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a New Yorker article on the driverless car written by Burkhard Bilger. I’d heard of cars that parked themselves. But I hadn’t heard of driverless cars. Well, not since I’d seen the
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: agora. When I read Kathryn Schulz’s rousing article about Twitter, I blogged on it. Then I pondered the meaning of a word she’d used that I didn’t recognize:
Reading time: About 2.5 minutes Non-fiction writers are usually allergic to making stuff up. But, ironically, many of us struggle with making quotes more believable. Here are some tips…. Have you ever had to “make up” quotes for your boss? This is not such an unusual thing in the world of corporate communications. Bosses are
7 tips for making quotes more believable in your writing Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help writers. Today I discuss a New York Times article by Marie Myung-Ok Lee. Marie Myung-Ok Lee teaches writing at Columbia University in New York and is also the
There are a zillion data points of light out there Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute A great way to improve your writing is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. I comment today on one written by novelist Cathy Marie Buchanan. I picked up the novel The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan on the
A bobbing little nod…. Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. I write today about a simile from novelist Stephen Gauer. This weekend I read the book Hold Me Now, by Stephen Gauer. A crime fiction novel — not a genre I typically read — the
The figurative language of Stephen Gauer… Read More »
