I recently discovered Author Magazine, a website chock-full of advice on writing and publishing, and read an article there on how to critique other writers’ work. The article is specifically about critiquing within a writers’ group session after an author reads his or her work out loud, but much of the advice applies well to …
We all know English can be a tricky language. It has an immense vocabulary plucked and plundered from all over the world, many words that look or sound the same but have rather different meanings, some difficult-to-follow grammar rules, and countless curveballs in spelling and pronunciation. One confounding feature of this gloriously eccentric language of …
Penguin Random House’s proposed (and, as of October 31, court-blocked) merger with Simon & Schuster raised concern about the future of competition in book publishing. Stephen King spoke to those concerns in August when he testified for the U.S. Department of Justice’s lawsuit to stop the merger. In the 50 years since start of his …
“Never” rules are, in my opinion, always wrong. (Or, if you will, never right.) When I was in my first year of journalism school, a senior student told me to “never lead with a quote.” I just couldn’t agree with him then, and I still disagree. Leading with a quote usually isn’t advisable, but there …
Communicating about disabilities can be tricky. Writers strive to be respectful and sensitive in their choice of words, but there isn’t universal agreement on how to do that and when a line is being crossed. One key issue is whether language should be “person-first” or “identity-first.” Should someone be described as “a person with a …
Preferred terminology for writing about the original peoples of Canada has changed over the years, and it’s important for journalists, business communicators and other writers to keep up with the times. When I was starting my journalism career, the preferred term for First Nations, Metis and Inuit collectively was aboriginal with a lowercase a. That …
Be careful how you use the word only. Poor placement of this little modifier can confuse the reader and twist the meaning of a sentence. “He only wrote three songs” could be taken to mean he alone wrote three songs or, alternatively, that he wrote three songs and did nothing more with them (i.e., he …
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” Source: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1886).
You know Nigeria’s citizens are Nigerians, but what are the folks in neighboring Niger called? Are they also Nigerians, or Nigerans, or maybe Nigerites? What you’re looking for is Niger’s proper demonym. A demonym is a word that identifies people from a particular place. There are demonyms attached to countries, regions, cities, and entire continents …
“If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” U.S. journalist Gail Sheehy (1936-2020) authored 17 books. This quotation is from Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life.