Writing
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
20 Common Grammar Mistakes That (Almost) Everyone Makes
I’ve edited a monthly magazine for more than six years, and it’s a job that’s come with more frustration than reward. If there’s one thing I am grateful for — and it sure isn’t the pay — it’s that my work has allowed endless time to hone my craft to Louis Skolnick levels of grammar geekery. As someone who slings red ink for a living, let me tell you: grammar is an ultra-micro component in the larger picture; it lies somewhere in the final steps of the editing trail; and as such it’s an overrated quasi-irrelevancy in the creative process, perpetuated into importance primarily by bitter nerds who accumulate tweed jackets and crippling inferiority complexes.
As an editor, I’ve noticed several recurring bad habits you heathens would do well to disabuse yourselves of immediately. Almost without exception, these bad habits instantiate themselves as a series of stock phrases and constructions that reflect a lack of focus, a lack of fully developed argument, or the kind of intellectual laziness that sets in as you slog through your first draft. These things happen, That’s ok. Editing helps you save yourselves from these offenses before your thoughts hit the world and everyone knows your dirty secrets. but you can edit yourself, and you should. Use the following checklist as a guide to tighten ing up both your words as well as and what you mean.
(More) tips for writing well (Austin Govella at Thinking and Making)
These are the 100 most beautiful words in the English language, apparently. Ailurophile A cat-lover.
SO MUCH TO TELL YOU: the 100 club
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker ( Russian : Щелкунчик, Балет-феерия , Shchelkunchik, Balet-feyeriya ; French : Casse-Noisette, Ballet-Féerie ), Op. 71, is a two-act ballet , originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky .This is quite a long post about a distinction some people make between that and which as relative pronouns — an oft-disputed point of English usage. Feel free to skip ahead if you’re familiar with the territory.
That which is restrictive « Sentence first
Swans , genus Cygnus , are birds of the family Anatidae , which also includes geese and ducks . Swans are grouped with the closely related geese in the subfamily Anserinae where they form the tribe Cygnini .
Swan
English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing: Exercises for Poets 1 . Five Ways to Begin Writing a New Poem
English 50 Exercises for Poets
English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing: Exercises for Story Writers More Exercises:
Exercises for Fiction Writers - Page 2
Book Ideas for Young Writers
You’re just getting started as a writer. Or you’ve been doing it your whole life.When George Plimpton asked Ernest Hemingway what the best training for an aspiring writer would be in a 1954 interview , Hem replied, “Let’s say that he should go out and hang himself because he finds that writing well is impossibly difficult. Then he should be cut down without mercy and forced by his own self to write as well as he can for the rest of his life. At least he will have the story of the hanging to commence with.” T oday, writing well is more important than ever.