Have you ever completed the Word Power feature in Reader’s Digest? I’m not much interested in such games – I don’t even do crosswords! – but I am committed to increasing my own vocabulary. Why? Because if I know more words, I’ll be able to read more fluently. But even more important, I’ll be able to write better. Knowing lots of words allows me – and you — to be more precise in writing. In my word-of-the-week feature I share a word with you that I’ve discovered in my own reading.
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: dilatory… Are you too dilatory in your writing? I encountered the word dilatory in my recent reading. It appeared in the book Birdsong […]
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Reading time: About 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: sententious. I’d avoided the book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly — by Jean-Dominique Bauby (pictured above) — for years. As a survivor of
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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: maieutic… I wrote yesterday about Draftback — a fascinating piece of free software that will allow you to record your writing, keystroke
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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: sprezzatura… Many attribute God-like credentials to American writer John McPhee and hold his writing in awe. I do not. In fact, I find some of
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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: hurdy gurdy. Of course, I know what a hurdy-gurdy is. It’s a stringed instrument (pictured above) that produces sound by a crank-turned wheel
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Reading time: Less than 2 minutes 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: chimera. I’d never read anything written by British novelist Sebastian Faulks (pictured above), despite multiple urgings from my husband to give the book Birdsong
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: lineaments. When I read the novel Brazzaville Beach, by William Boyd (shown above), late last year, I wrote myself a brief note about
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Reading time: Less than 2 minutes 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: quailing. I haven’t yet read the book 1789: The Threshold of the Modern Age by David Andress (pictured above), but I know
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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: clerihew. Earlier this week I wrote about Ben Davis’s marvellous article on 30 art-writing clichés that writers should ditch. But his excellent column
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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: cloisonné. I’m not hugely interested in things, unless perhaps they are books. I hold no love for fashion or shoes (as most people can
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