Neil Gaiman's 8 Rules of Writing By Maria Popova In the winter of 2010, inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing published in The New York Times nearly a decade earlier, The Guardian reached out to some of today’s most celebrated authors and asked them to each offer his or her commandments. After Zadie Smith’s 10 rules of writing, here come 8 from the one and only Neil Gaiman: WritePut one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.Finish what you’re writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it.Put it aside. For more timeless wisdom on writing, see Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 rules for a great story, David Ogilvy’s 10 no-bullshit tips, Henry Miller’s 11 commandments, Jack Kerouac’s 30 beliefs and techniques, John Steinbeck’s 6 pointers, and Susan Sontag’s synthesized learnings. Image by Kimberly Butler
Beware of nominalizations (AKA zombie nouns) - Helen Sword This lesson was based on an op-ed Helen Sword wrote for the New York Times entitlted Zombie Nouns. would you de-zombify the following sentence? (Hint: Your rewritten version should include a clearly defined human subject – e.g. “writers” – and at least one active verb): “The anesthetization of readers through an abundance of nominalizations is often the consequence of laziness rather than intentionality.”Can you rephrase the following sentence in zombie-speak?: “I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.” (Martin Luther King)For an operationalized assessment of your own propensity for nominalization dependence (translation: to diagnose your own zombie habits), try pasting a few samples of your prose into the Writer’s Diet test.
Exquisite corpse an exquisite corpse Exquisite corpse, also known as exquisite cadaver (from the original French term cadavre exquis) or rotating corpse, is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. "The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun," as in “The green duck sweetly sang the dreadful dirge”) or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. History[edit] In a variant now known as picture consequences, instead of sentences, portions of a person were drawn.[3] Later the game was adapted to drawing and collage, producing a result similar to children's books in which the pages were cut into thirds, the top third pages showing the head of a person or animal, the middle third the torso, and the bottom third the legs, with children having the ability to "mix and match" by turning pages. Modern examples[edit] William S. See also[edit] Notes[edit]
Programmer unleashes bad-grammar bot on Twitter - Americas - World Every day, his Twitter queue fills up with messages telling him to die or delete his account. "I find you extremely annoying," one caller said in a voice mail. "You make little girls cry. What's your problem?" Fanaro is not a hacker. The technology behind such bots is simple, which helps explain why so many tech-savvy grammarians have launched their own. Teachers, parents and other curmudgeons have long blamed texting and social media for the general decline of the English language. Although Twitter may seem like a stronghold of sloppy writing and acronym-happy Internet slang, a number of vigilantes are hilariously and controversially fighting back. Bots such as Fanaro's ping unsuspecting Twitter users with sarcastic corrections. "I didn't set out with a purpose or anything," he says. "Funny" is a fair description of Twitter grammar. Despite the online kerfuffle, most linguists agree that neither texting nor the Internet defile the English language. Why the panic, then?
Paragraphs and Topic Sentences A paragraph is a series of sentences that are organized and coherent, and are all related to a single topic. Almost every piece of writing you do that is longer than a few sentences should be organized into paragraphs. This is because paragraphs show a reader where the subdivisions of an essay begin and end, and thus help the reader see the organization of the essay and grasp its main points. Paragraphs can contain many different kinds of information. A well-organized paragraph supports or develops a single controlling idea, which is expressed in a sentence called the topic sentence. Although most paragraphs should have a topic sentence, there are a few situations when a paragraph might not need a topic sentence. Most paragraphs in an essay have a three-part structure—introduction, body, and conclusion. Body: follows the introduction; discusses the controlling idea, using facts, arguments, analysis, examples, and other information. Repeat key words or phrases. To show addition:
Shakespeare's Grammar May Be The Real Source Of His Genius Read a line from a William Shakespeare play and notice the cadence with which you speak. All of those breaths and pauses from the commas and semicolons spread seemingly sporadically within the flowery language are not just for theatrical drama; they may be the source of Shakespeare's genius. Dr. Through computer-based linguistic analysis, Hope dissects the language of Early Modern literature, with a focus on the works of Shakespeare. Though there is no doubt the writer had a knack for language (according to the Oxford English Dictionary, he coined more than 500 words), it was his liberal use of grammar that set him apart. The English language was developing and evolving so rapidly during the 16th and 17th centuries that writers of the time period could essentially use the English language like clay; often molding and constructing a new vocabulary. "He wrote during a transitional period for English grammar when there was a range of grammatical options open to writers," Hope wrote. Dr.
LitWeb - The Norton Introduction to Literature: W. W. Norton & Company StudySpace When it comes to the study of literature, reading and writing are closely inter-related—even mutually dependent—activities. On the one hand, the quality of whatever we write about a literary text depends entirely upon the quality of our work as readers. On the other hand, our reading isn’t truly complete until we’ve tried to capture our sense of a text in writing. Writing about literature can take any number of forms, ranging from the very informal and personal to the very formal and public. *In chapters 32–36, unless otherwise specified, page numbers in the examples refer to this volume, The Norton Introduction to Literature, Tenth Edition. How the internet is killing off silent letters Professor David Crystal says people drop letters when typing them into search engines He says the internet will influence changes in spelling in the future Academic labels the 'h' in rhubarb as 'illogical' By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 08:29 GMT, 2 June 2013 | Updated: 06:40 GMT, 3 June 2013 David Crystal, professor of linguistics of Bangor University, explained how people are dropping letters when typing words into search engines Common misspellings of English words could be acceptable within a few years because they are used online, a linguist has said. ‘Rhubarb’ could change to ‘rubarb’, ‘receipt’ to ‘receit’ and ‘necessary’ to ‘neccesary’. Simpler online forms of ‘irritating’ complex words are starting to affect mainstream usage, linguistics professor David Crystal told the Hay Literary Festival. He started monitoring the word ‘rhubarb’ ten years ago by typing the correct spelling into a search engine, then the error ‘rubarb’. ‘Rhubarb is still the dominant one by a factor of 50.
LitWeb - The Norton Introduction to Literature: W. W. Norton & Company StudySpace W. W. Norton Home | Help | Contact Us | Site map | Site Credits LitWeb - The Norton Introduction to Literature StudySpace Genres Workshops Writing About Literature Glossary Tutorials Writing about Literature Paraphrase, Summary, Description Quiz Take the quiz about this section. Norton/Write The Norton Gradebook Instructors and students now have an easy way to track online quiz scores with the Norton Gradebook. Go to the Norton Gradebook American Passages Visit our companion site, American Passages. Back to Top Links Norton Website College Books Professional Books Trade Books Help Desk About W. W. This site and the materials contained herein ©2014 W.W. Winston Churchill's Way With Words hide captionWinston Churchill wrote every word of his many speeches — he said he'd spend an hour working on a single minute of a speech. Above, he is shown speaking during the 1945 election campaign. Express/Getty Images Winston Churchill is best remembered as the British prime minister whose speeches rallied a nation under a relentless Nazi onslaught in World War II. But few people know that he won the Nobel Prize in Literature — in part for his mastery of speechmaking. hide captionThough he went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Churchill didn't always excel in school. Courtesy of Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge Now, a new exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York City, Churchill: The Power of Words, holds a megaphone to Churchill's extraordinary oratory. On May 13, 1940, three days after Germany invaded France, Churchill gave his first speech as prime minister to the House of Commons, a speech that was later broadcast to the public. The citation, Kiely says, is wonderful.