Does good grammar matter?
True or false? Your written grammar doesn’t have to be particularly good, since what matters most is the imaginative or factual content of your work.
Category: writing
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
Pinker says: Respect your tools and break the rules. And much else besides!
The Complete Plain Words (2nd edition) by Ernest Gowers
Reading this British book published in 1978 (a revised version of the 1948 original) was like going on an archaeological expedition in a foreign country. The English recommended by the author differs from my...
Style by Joseph M. Williams
I never thought I would read the word “turgid” so many times in my entire life. Style: Toward Clarity and Grace repeats the word, of course, because it’s telling you how to avoid writing...
Everybody Writes by Ann Handley
Everybody Writes is a book that Derek Zoolander would recommend to “adults who can’t write good and want to do other stuff good too”. If you’re one of those, then, by all means, share...
Excess words
Much has been written, ironically, on the virtue of brevity. On the basis of word choice, I take exception to the advice (found on page 704 of An Introduction to Fiction) to “cut excess...
What You Need to Know about British and American English by George Davidson
I’ve come a long way since the days when I consistently spelled the word ‘British’ with two t’s, which is phonetically intuitive but correct nowhere on the planet. Nevertheless, there were still some new...
How to punctuate dialog
Good writing is self-effacing. Personally, when I’m critiquing fiction, I find it very, very difficult to evaluate things like character, plot, and pacing if there are a lot of distracting technical errors. One easily...