Receive Our Writing Tips via EmailA Quiz About Quotation Marks
Use of quotation marks for dialogue is fairly straightforward; several posts on this website that deal with the topic can by found by searching for “quotation marks.” This quiz deals with other uses of these emphasis markers.
The Story Behind Words for Hair Color
The conventions for referring to hair color are tousled. Why is it that we refer to someone with light-colored hair as a blonde (and, rarely, a blond) but we call someone with red hair a redhead? Why are blonde and brunette spelled two ways?
Don’t Be Negative About Negatives
A site visitor called attention to a sentence in one of my recent posts and asked, because it has two negatives, whether it is grammatically correct. The sentence in question? “In case you hadn’t heard, I couldn’t care less.”
30 Archaic Adjectives and Adverbs
The words below are either obsolete, archaic, or old-fashioned, and though those in the latter category can still be found in modern writing, use all with caution. Sparing use keeps these words alive and adds a whimsical or quaint note, but too frequent recourse to such antiquities will have you sounding like a Renaissance Faire refugee.
Existent vs. Extant
What’s the difference between existent and extant? It might be more appropriate to ask, what’s the difference between exists and “is extant”? Existent usually seems awkward to me; exists or “to exist” often seems more suitable.
A Quiz About Attribution
Punctuation associated with attribution — identification of the source of a statement — can, when used incorrectly, confuse rather than clarify communication. Troubleshoot these troublesome sentences, paying attention to the relationship of the attribution to the rest of the sentence, and then compare your revisions with my solutions at the bottom of the page.
10 Experiential Writing Prompts
Write about what you know — that’s one of the fundamental nuggets of wisdom for writers. “But I don’t know anything worth writing about!” you protest. You don’t? Anything is worth writing about if the writer finds something engaging about the subject.
25 Subordinating Conjunctions
If you’re having trouble developing sentences with sufficient variety to keep your writing fresh, take a ride on A WHITE BUS.
A Quiz About Expletives
One easy solution for getting sentences off to a strong start is to make them more active by eliminating what is called an expletive, or a dummy subject, such as “There is” or “There are.” It is not necessary to eradicate all expletives from your writing, but minimize them by identifying the real subject of the sentence and reconstructing the sentence with that focus — with the added benefit of a more concise statement.
90 Verbs Starting with “Ex-”
Ex- marks the spot. Go beyond, go out on a limb, go outside your comfort zone. Get some extra excitement by using these vivid verbs starting with the syllable ex-:
Book Review: “Writing Down the Bones”
I was reading Natalie Goldberg’s 2005 edition of her classic writing guide Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, and as I worked my way through its sixty-four short chapters, I became less and less enchanted by her ruminations and suggestions as a sort of fatigue set in.
A Quiz About Parenthetical Punctuation
Em dashes are woefully underused and misused. Here are five sentences that would be much improved by their proper use, or by proper use of other punctuation in cooperation with them. Determine how each sentence would benefit from changes in punctuation and compare your revisions with my suggested solutions at the bottom of the page.
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