What’s the difference between social and societal? Not much, but enough that you may become the victim of social stigma if you ignore subtle societal signals. Societal is the pedantic alternative to social. They both mean “pertaining to society,” but as the latter word, first attested in the Middle Ages, was increasingly used in the … Read more
The rules about forming possessives can seem confusing, especially because forms differs according to which style manual a publication is following. But the primary styles are relatively simple. In this post, I will refer only to the two prevalent styles in mainstream publishing: that of the Associated Press Stylebook, the resource of record for American … Read more
When it comes to hyphenation, prose often suffers from the Goldilocks effect: either too much or too little, but seldom just right. Here are some erroneously constructed elements along with repaired revisions that let them eat, sit, or sleep with contentment. 1. “Scientists have found that a second, as-yet smaller wave of mussel extinctions followed … Read more
The Oxford English Dictionary has an insatiable appetite for new entries: Every three months, it expands its inventory with dozens of words. A recent newspaper article, however, sensationalized recent acquisitions by selectively announcing a pile of pop-culture-inspired terms, missing the whole point of a dictionary. The OED, like most other dictionaries, is descriptivist: It describes … Read more
A modifier is an optional word or phrase that changes the nature of the information in a sentence without altering the sentence’s grammatical structure by its inclusion or omission. The specific varieties of modifier misuse follow. 1. Dangling Modifier A dangling modifier is one in which the introduced word or phrase seems to be associated … Read more
How many plot types are there, and does it really matter? And if you write nonfiction, rather than fiction, why should you read this post? (I guess you’ll have to read the post to find out.) Throughout the years, writers have posited various opinions about how many distinct types of stories exist. Several of the … Read more
What’s the difference between an artist and an artisan? This unnecessarily sensitive question is equivalent to the issue of what constitutes art and what is designated as craft. In both cases, the former word essentially refers to the making of tangible or intangible products as an expression of creativity and imagination for purely aesthetic reasons. … Read more
A New Yorker staff writer and best-selling author recently joined the rogues’ gallery of prose practitioners who decided that because the facts aren’t good enough, embellishment is necessary — and who, by doing, so, erode the already endangered social status of writing. Jonah Lehrer — already in hot water at the New Yorker for incorporating … Read more
This is a guest post by Arthur Plotnik. ALL WE WRITERS CRAVE is to charge into the resistant, overloaded brain of a reader and shoot forked lightning through every last dendrite. Why else, if not to achieve high-voltage impact, do we push our own synapses into the red zone night after night, year after year? … Read more
Are your lead characters a menagerie of Mary Sues? A Mary Sue is a walking cliché, unrealistically flawless and therefore flat and boring — a hero in your story, but a villain in your efforts to create well-rounded characters. The label for this trope is from a character in a fan-fiction Star Trek parody featuring … Read more
What’s the difference between conscience and conscious? They stem from the same Latin root, but their usage is distinct. Writers occasionally confuse the two words, but if you remain conscious, you’ll likely be able to say with a clear conscience that you know the difference. Conscience and conscious both come from the Latin word conscius; … Read more
Think of all the things you do each day, including mundane tasks like getting dressed, cooking meals, and speaking to other people. They all involve patterns or random sequences of ebb and flow: rhythm. Writing is like that, too. Just as with any other activity, rhythm in writing can occur automatically, but it’s improved by … Read more