August 17th, 2007 — grammar, sentence tips
Style problems getting the way of your prose? Pick up the pace! Break through bad style and you’ll find yourself zipping along the autobahn feeling spunky and free.
A billion years ago, I started this series and forgot to post the rest of it! Bad blogger, bad! You may have forgotten, the first trick:
1) Avoid unnecessary adjective clauses.
Trick two has the same catchy grammatical joy:
June 25th, 2007 — editing, grammar, sentence tips, writing
Anybody can write. It’s just a matter of sitting down at a keyboard and whacking out some words. As I’ve heard Camy Tang say, it’s a matter of getting BIC (butt in chair) with regular consistency.
But—as millions of completely worthless and boring blogs attest—not just anybody can write well. Your local bookstore is probably well stocked with books on writing and inspiration and how-to-publish-your-book-idea-and-get-on-easy-street. A handful of those books may even be worth the trees that died to make their pulp.
April 23rd, 2007 — grammar, sentence tips, writing
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Good Word Editor!
In my dreams… Where the whole world values diction and syntax and language control as much as I do. (Hey, people, communication matters!)
So who am I going to rescue today?
March 1st, 2007 — blogging, editing, grammar, sentence tips, sentences, writing
Fancy grammarians call them cumulative sentences. (Not to be confused with cumulus clouds.) The rest of us just call them loose. Like a pair of comfortable jeans. Like one of my daughter’s lower incisors. Like a lot of what Hemingway wrote.
And they are the easiest kinds of sentences to write. Anyone can do it. Here’s how.
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I'm Senior Editor for The High Calling, High Calling Blogs, and Faith In The Workplace.