Required Reading – In Defense of Cliches

Ryan Cooper writes, This man isOrwellian. Writing is tricky business. And so it makes sense that writers are often prickly and opinionated about what makes prose good or bad. Thus, over at the Washington Post lives a very long list of clichés and stale phrases that are now verboten due to overuse: “The Outlook List of Things … Continue reading →

Required Reading – “How to write: A year’s worth of advice from Jonathan Franzen, Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, and others”

Joe Fassler writes: This year, I talked to nearly 50 different writers for the By Heartseries, a weekly column about beloved quotes and cherished lines. Each author shared the life-changing, values-shaping passages that have helped sustain creative practice throughout his or her career. Their contributions were eclectic and intensely personal: Jim Crace, whose novel Harvest was a finalist … Continue reading →

Required Reading – Oxford Dictionary Adds “twerk,” “derp,” “selfie,” “phablet,” and more voguish vocabulary”

Siraj Datoo writes, Oxford Dictionaries Online (ODO) is adding a slew of words that only recently came into general usage, many driven by fast-moving trends in technology and culture. Yes, “twerk” is now in the dictionary. The most relevant addition to the dictionary for Quartz readers is probably “phablet,” a portmanteau of “phone” and “tablet” used to … Continue reading →

Required Reading – Ellipses… Why so common? What are they really for?

Matthew J.X. Madley writes, What the … Why everyone and your mother started using ellipses … everywhere. Earlier this summer, Choire Sicha, the writer, editor, and co-founder of the Awl, came to an unpleasant realization. His emails, he noticed, had veered into the realm of the ridiculous. “Suddenly, one day,” he recalls, “I was delivering … Continue reading →

Required Reading – Tell Their Secrets

Silas House writes, I learned early on that reading novels could save me. Even before I heard Simon and Garfunkel sing it in “I Am a Rock,” I knew that I had my books and my poetry to protect me. But it was not so much the books themselves that I loved as the characters … Continue reading →

Required Reading – ‘Screamer,’ Slammer,’ ‘Bang’…. and 15 Other Ways to Say ‘Exclamation Point’

Punctuation can turn good writing into great writing or it can completely muddle a writer’s point.  A well-placed dash emits as much as or more meaning than wonderfully arranged words or it signals convoluted and confusing text. Megan Garber argues the exclamation point is a type of punctuation that does not offer many benefits.  Comparing … Continue reading →

Required Reading – The Dark Side of Verbs-as-Nouns

Check out this read.  Henry Hitchings writes, In my previous essay, I wrote about nominalization — the deployment as nouns of words we mostly expect to encounter as verbs or adjectives. Aware of many people’s tendency to vilify this kind of usage, I speculated about the psychology behind it. I was interested in thinking about … Continue reading →

Required Reading – Evidence Lost: We’re Not Likely to See Editing Like Proust’s in the Future

Rebecca Rosen writes, This image comes from the notebooks of Marcel Proust, one page among the thousands that would eventually become In Search of Lost Time. Though there are a few sections in his manuscripts that seem to have come out more or less as the author had hoped (see here for example), many, many more display whole … Continue reading →

Rhetorical Devices to Borrow from Obama’s State of the Union Speech

Many discuss the content of President Obama’s State of the Union speech – whether he presented too liberal or polarizing of a message, too many agendas, etc.  But another concern is the construction of his speech.  It is as equally important to understand how a writer says something as to what a writer says. Rhetorically … Continue reading →

Required Reading – Making Comedy and Paper with Liz Lemon

Check out Ploughshares’ article by A.J. Kandathil for seven writing tips. If you didn’t have the pleasure of viewing “30 Rock” before its finale on January 31, allow me to introduce you to the funniest female sitcom character since Lucille Ball. Her name is Liz Lemon, and — as the head writer for “TGS with Tracy … Continue reading →