Word count: 338 words 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: sybaritic. I haven’t met Jan Wong in person, but I did hear the talk about her when I worked in newspapers. Rumoured to be […]
What does sybaritic mean? Read More »
Word count: 649 words Reading time: About 2.5 minutes I’m frequently impressed by the parallels between writing and music. Today I find writing inspiration from the musical work of Jonathan Mann. I can’t remember who told me about Jonathan Mann (pictured above) but I’m grateful for the tip. I don’t spend enough time on the
5 reasons why being relentless is a good career strategy Read More »
Word count: 313 words Reading time: Just over 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. Jim Romenesko is a blogger who writes about the media. The idea for today’s post comes from him. I started working
Things we do not say Read More »
Word count: 204 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s comes from Nicole Bokat. I have family members who suffer from clinical anxiety. This was perhaps the
I curled myself into a snail-shape… Read More »
Reading time: About 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from the late Roger Ebert. Even when I was an entertainment editor for about five years, I managed to do the job without owning a TV. (Shhh, don’t tell my boss.) As a result,
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Word count: 240 words 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: mishegoss. Somehow, when I saw the word mishegoss, I knew it was Yiddish, even though I didn’t know what it meant. (Perhaps it
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Word count: 710 words Reading time: less than 3 minutes If you’re unfamiliar with readability statistics, here’s an introduction. And if you haven’t gone beyond the Flesch-Kincaid index, here’s a new idea for you… Did you know that in pre-Elizabethan times an average written sentence was 50 words long? Fifty words! Why? I’m guessing that
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Word count: 286 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 present an article on nominalizations. Are you familiar with “nominalizations”? These are verbs (action words) or adjectives (describing words) that have
What happens when you turn a verb into a noun? Read More »
Word count: 286 words Reading time: Just over 1 minute A great way to improve your writing skills is to emulate the work of others. That’s why, every week, I present a sentence that I’d happily imitate. Today’s writing comes from Susan Silk and Barry Goldman. Today, I’m going to break my own rule. Instead
Do you worry ever about saying the wrong thing? Read More »
Reading time: Just over 1 minute I like to share interesting pieces of figurative language I encounter in my reading. Today’s comes from British actor and comedian Russell Brand. When Margaret Thatcher died on April 8, I felt nothing. I hadn’t liked her politics but, then, she wasn’t my Prime Minister. Safely stored across the
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