Write with Not Too Many Words
A friend recently told me she’d read somewhere that we should write “with conciseness,” meaning “with not too many words.” “I thought it was ‘concision,’” she said. I wasn’t sure which word was correct (turns out they both are), but immediately wondered, Who says stuff like that? Actually, I think I giggled a little bit [...]
Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Writers
There is, in the minds of some people, something wrong with wanting to be a writer. Tell your parents you want to be a brain surgeon and they’ll be proud of you; tell them you want to be a writer (or artist or actor) and they will weep for you and take away your books—or [...]
You’re the Bee’s Knees!
A friend informed me this morning that I am “the bee’s knees.” I already thought I was pretty terrific, and her pronouncement confirms the fact. I am (at least as friends go) excellent. But then I started wondering about the phrase. Do bees even have knees? If so, are those knees excellent? An exhaustive five-minute [...]
Please Edit Your Rant
Occasionally I get sucked into reading the comments posted to various online articles. This is often a mistake. Some comments are thoughtful and interesting, even helpful, but many of them are just short (or not so short) rants. Even that might be excusable if the rant writers could spell and punctuate correctly. Hey, at least [...]
Clues from Clews
I’ve been dipping into The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories again. Today I learned that the word clue comes from clew. These two words were once simply different spellings of a word that meant “a ball of yarn or thread.” Now you may be wondering, as I was, how a ball of yarn morphs [...]
Here’s to Hovels!
I am writing today from my home office, and I am almost ecstatically happy about it. You probably couldn’t tell, but I’ve been away for the past two weeks—and by “away” I mean I was about half an hour up the road dog-sitting for a friend. It was fun. The dog was great, the house [...]
Editors Are People Too
This hasn’t happened to me in a while (thankfully), but I certainly remember the feeling of annoyance and disbelief I experienced when it did happen. I am referring to the author who e-mails an editor at 7:30 on a Friday evening, waits several hours for a response, and then sends another e-mail that goes something [...]
Thomas Bowdler: An Editor Not to Emulate
Bowdlerize: to expurgate by omitting parts considered vulgar. An editor should be humble. At least that’s what I think, and I know a lot about this sort of thing. Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825) was not what you would call a “humble” editor. In fact, he was so un-humble his name became synonymous with the wholesale purging [...]
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