What Effect Are You Going For?
That is why the prescriptive advice you often get in books like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style—write short sentences, be direct, don’t get lost in a maze of piled-up clauses, avoid the...
View ArticleFirst and Last Sentences
First sentences: are “promissory notes. Whether they foreshadow plot, sketch in character, establish mood, or jump-start arguments, the road ahead of them stretches invitingly and all things are, at...
View ArticleWords Used Properly
Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly—they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced. That’s one of the things I try to teach my students–how to write piercingly. Helmholtz in...
View ArticleQuotes on Reading
When I get a little money, I buy books. If any is left, I buy food and clothes. – Erasmus We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou...
View ArticleWordsmithy
I am looking forward to reading Doug Wilson’s book Wordsmithy (although I hope it does not all come from his past blog posts. I hate blog books.) Andy Naselli has some highlights from the book. Wilson...
View ArticleWriting to Discover
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe. Gustave Flaubert
View ArticleOn Reading and Imagination
First, reading. Reading is the way we learn to inhabit the world. Not the natural world, but the cultural world: the world of meaning. Martha Nussbaum has some wonderful essays in her book Love’s...
View ArticleBuilding Your Vocabulary
Good post from the Art of Manliness on building your vocabulary. They say that the benefits of building your vocabulary are: Gives you the ability to say what you mean. Helps you understand other...
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Marginalia | by Billy Collins
Dr. Pennington read the excellent poem Marginalia by Billy Collins in class today. Write on you conquerors of the white perimeter (just not in library books!). Sometimes the notes are ferocious,...
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Stylish Academic Writing
On advice from a friend, I picked up Helen Sword’s “Stylish Academic Writing“ published by Harvard University Press in 2012. This is a timely book as academic writing has for too long become stuffy and...
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Schopenhauer on Style
Brain Pickings writes the following: One of the most timeless meditations on style comes from 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In “On Style,” found in The Essays of Schopenhauer...
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