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: blowsily… I’ve always enjoyed the word blowsy and assumed it referred to a messy, gregarious woman with unkempt hair. But when I encountered it in the very fine novel 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: catercornered I love regional variations in language. In the US (and Canada), for example, some places call the sugary drink “pop,” others refer to it as “soda”
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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: ineluctably. As a longtime fan of the book The War of Art, I was delighted to discover that author Steven Pressfield has a delightful and active blog. And
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Word count: 289 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 comes from Rebecca Mead via The New Yorker. I’m a big believer in reading aloud to children.
The lighting was persuasively unflattering… Read More »
Word count: 226 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, timorously. One of my readers recommended to me the novel The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff. I really enjoyed
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Word count: 236 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute Each week I identify a sentence from my reading that I’ve found particularly effective. By emulating such writers at Tessa Hadley we can learn a great deal. I’ve written many times about why writers should avoid adjectives and adverbs and concentrate instead on finding crisp
A building that’s mournfully aloof…. Read More »
Word count: 265 words Reading time: About 1 minute Building your vocabulary is always a good idea. It benefits your reading and it also helps you be more specific and precise in your writing. Here is my word of the week, fecklessly. Even a book you don’t like very much can teach you something. A
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