Michael You have a right to disagree with my previous post Writing with Speech Recognition Software. For many writers, dictating a book instead of typing it just doesn’t work. Maybe you can dictate faster than typing. But that doesn’t matter much if you can’t think faster than you can type. The speed bottleneck is often in … Read more
Why is it important to write correctly, to use standard grammar, spelling, and punctuation? Because you want people to understand you, that’s all. Why are the picky details important? If my headline had said “Write Good,” wouldn’t you understand that I meant “Write Well”? Maybe so, but it’s less distracting and easier to understand if … Read more
The English language has countless ways to say “Great!” or “Cool!” When people want to sound au courant, fashionable, trendy, or with-it, they often choose slang words that are currently popular in their culture – very informal, unconventional words that may not be found in standard dictionaries, but have a freshness and color that may … Read more
When you advise someone, you give advice. One is a verb, the other is a noun. And where does advice come from? Good advice is offered by advisers/advisors. The spelling is the only difference between those two words, and usually adviser and advisor mean the same thing. Spelling it with an e is more common, … Read more
You learned how to write outlines in school, I suppose. You were probably required to do it a certain way: I. Roman numerals for the main points A. capital letters for the sub-points 1. Regular Arabic numerals for the sub-sub-points a. lower-case letters for all the sub-points below that We could call it the Roman-Arabic … Read more
What’s your favorite word of compliment or admiration? How do you express approval? These are important questions for each generation of young people, who want their vocabulary to distinguish them from previous generations. It’s not fool-proof: a slang expression of approval is often fashionable in one place or time but not another, and may even … Read more
This article contains every common preposition in the English language. Isn’t it nice to know that you can learn them all? A list of every common verb or every common noun would be very long… Prepositional phrases usually begin with a preposition and end with an object. For example, in the prepositional phrase under the … Read more
If critics tell you that your stories have too much dialogue, maybe you should consider writing scripts. It’s different from writing ordinary prose. For one thing, a script is not the finished work of art. It’s the blueprint that the director and actors use to create the work of art. The good news about that: … Read more
Students like stories. Teachers know that stories keep their interest. But plot, emotion, character, conflict and theme – the tools of a fiction writer – can be power tools for educators as well. Having an attitude in class Learning theorists have taught that students learn when they feel the need to; that in a sense, … Read more
Some writers neglect the power of emotion when communicating their ideas, valuing logic more than others do, and assuming that everyone thinks like they do – that careful reasoning is enough to convince readers and make points. But even the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who was no enemy of reason, taught that stimulating emotion in … Read more
A professional writer might add a thousand words a day to their rough draft. With speech recognition software, some writers can add several thousand. That’s one reason why more writers are choosing to dictate their books. Today the error rate of speech recognition software has improved to within a percentage point of a human being. … Read more
A writer can’t do anything he or she wants. Every human being – you too – is bound by limitations. Our readers are limited because they are human. A skillful writer learns to work with these limitations. Don’t overload the emotions of your readers. Escalating the emotional level of your story makes it interesting, you … Read more