Recognizing Passive Voice

About a year ago, I wrote a piece about the distinction between the active and the passive voice, but going…

Affect and Effect

The distinction between “affect” and “effect” trips up lots of people, but with one or two little mnemonics, you can…

Verbs

Two coworkers independently asked me this week about verbs, and in particular about understanding the various ways of past tense…

Can you Speel It?

Courtesy, as pretty much always, of Bryan A. Garner, here’s a list of 25 of the most commonly misspelled words…

Tangibilitate Your Utilization Potential

A character in a book I’m reading right now uses a nasty sort of corporate speak in which he actually…

Elements of Style

Last September, I wrote a post in which I cited Strunk and White’s Elements of Style on omitting needless words.…

Amounting to Something

I’ve run across a lot of misuse of “amount” lately and thought I’d give a quick tip for when to…

Steinbeck on Writing

Oddly enough, I was never made to read John Steinbeck in high school that I recall. I may have read…

Why, Why, Why, Why, and Why

Often we hear that a writer should keep in mind the Five Ws, questions that answer who, what when, where,…

Mother, Can I?

Photo by Flickr user http://www.worththewhisk.com I believe it’s generally known that “can” is the favored verb when asking about whether…

Swearing

It’s a simple fact of life that people swear. If you’re writing fiction about real people, or at least real…

Abandoning the Frankenstory

I’ve been going through something of a creative dry spell lately, writing instead in a more critical mode about things…