A Whole New Word: “Dispositive”
I’ve spent a fair amount of my life reading. Along the way, I’ve been exposed to a wide array of words. Yet, there are plenty of words I have never read before or, at least, never paid really noticed....
View ArticleGoogle’s Secret: Search Inside Yourself
According the New York Times, Google has a new secret that’s transforming their corporate life. In “O.K., Google, Take a Deep Breath,” Caitlin Kelly investigates this secret, a class called “Search...
View ArticleRepeating Yourself
There was a great little piece on the NY Times Opinionator blog about “the art of repetition,” and about how someone becomes a better writer – by learning to write thank-you notes: Having opened my...
View ArticleImprove Your Writing, Now
I teach writing and edit for a living, so I talk to a lot of people who say that they wish they knew a few tricks to help their writing improve. It’s unfortunate but true: once you’re a grownup, on the...
View ArticleThe Best Punctuation Marks
It may seem frivolous, I suppose, but thinking about punctuation is one of those things that writers and teachers love to do. I spent a half hour in an upper-level college writing class recently...
View ArticleThe Perfect Essay
This is a great essay – about essays, and about what a mother can teach a kid who think his writing is flawless. Criticism, at its best, is deeply personal, and gets to the heart of why we write the...
View ArticleSaint Fred
Who doesn’t love, and miss, Mr. Rogers? At The Curator, Vesper Stamper writes about the beloved show and its creator: Booking flights to Europe—does anyone have any SAS Airlines horror stories? The...
View ArticleOrdinary Mornings
At Art House America, a beautiful reflection on ordinary mornings from Allison Gaskins: The coffee pot steams and hisses at me like a surly teenager. Is this an early morning rebuke or a salute of some...
View ArticleHow recaps changed the way we think about TV – and our lives
Buried deep within this fascinating post about how TV episode recaps changed the way we think about both TV and our lives is a bold assertion: Our real-life ethical debates tend to bottom out at this...
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