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Tag Archives: writing
Writers Beware
Writers, beware. Be mindful of what you read The best way to write like the great masters of our craft is to read those masters, often — preferably out loud. Ideally, read them to groups of Actual People who are … Continue reading
Swahili
According to Google Translate, working from the English, the phrase “Unapaswa kula mavi ya tembo!” translates from Swahili into “You should eat elephant dung.” My Ugandan and Kenyan friends won’t tell me if that’s correct, so I’m not sure if … Continue reading
Enhanced Text — Helpful or Annoying?
What I’m referring to by “enhanced text” is the practice of highlighting text in some way for the purpose of clarifying its meaning. It’s something I tend to do in blogs and emails, but I try not to do it … Continue reading
Clarification #409 – slash and backslash
There is an old punctuation mark (some prefer to call it a symbol) popularly known as the slash. Its most frequent uses are to separate alternatives (this/that) or to signify a simple fraction (1/2). Sometimes it’s used to represent a … Continue reading
The Descent of English
Once in a while, against my better judgement, I get upset by the mis-use of English—not just in conversation, where perfection is rarely expected or appropriate, but in carefully scripted presentations, news copy, narrations and voice-overs, articles, books, etc. I … Continue reading
Samuel Beckett vs. The Audience
I just considered (after decades of reading and thinking about Godot) that Vladimir’s nickname could be read “Did I?” – this seems sufficiently appropriate for the “mental” one of the pair that I wonder if Beckett might have intended that … Continue reading
Writing Tools – Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign probably shouldn’t be thought of as a writing tool, but for some of us it’s very much a tool for writers. InDesign provides facilities for very powerful and flexible publication development in many areas, certainly far beyond books … Continue reading
An Author’s Statement
In the last decade I’ve been writing mostly “fiction.” By that I mean not “non-fiction.” But genres are tricky, aren’t they? To write well, I advocate giving up all genres, and ignoring all the rules and admonitions (like this one), … Continue reading →