In a post titled “A Bookstore Stimulus Package?” in the Freakonomics blog on the New York Times Web site, Stephen J. Dubner highlighted a plea from the president of the Author’s Guild to its members to “mount a book-buying splurge”…
Business writing suffering from the need for speed
This AP article titled “Business, B-schools fight bad writing” suggests that demand for solid freelance/contract writers will continue to rise at least for the foreseeable future. There remains a dearth of pen-ability across the country as a result of the…
Holiday gifts for your favorite writer
The holidays are coming – faster than I anticipated. I am a terrible procrastinator when it comes to buying gifts. I now order most of my Christmas gifts online and pay extra for both wrapping and accelerated shipping. Thank you…
Impetus, advocate, derelict, brevity – might as well be foreign words to graduates
An opinion editorial titled “Verbally Challenged – Potholes in college students’ minds” in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle highlights some frightening realities about the ability of today’s university students to recognize common words and construct simple sentences. The article’s author, a journalism…
Don’t end sentences with a preposition? Bloody nonsense.
Today’s New York Times includes an op-ed titled “An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With.” My third grade teacher would have made the writer sit in the corner and wear the dunce cap (yes,…
Passive about the active voice
The following is the introduction to an article I received on keeping your writing in the active voice: “Eliminating Passive Writing in Your PR Articles Over the past year our editorial department has constantly been reviewing the most common mistakes…
Verbs optional
A French author’s new book without verbs and a clever PR funeral event in its honor. No verbs in the Wall Street Journal article. No verbs in my blog. Just lonely adverbs and endless flowery descriptors of passive subjects between…