On one corner of my street, someone has put up a sign that reads Found Cat, and at the other corner, someone else has put up another sign for another cat that reads Cat Found. Aside from the fact that there seem to be a lot of unattached cats in the neighborhood, what is the …
Author Archives: rultimo
Upcoming Online Short Course
Reading Closely to Write Wednesdays, September 27 through October 18 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. CT It’s an open secret that we learn to write better and better by reading more and more closely. On Wednesday, September 27, Writing Smartly will begin another short course of four one-hour sessions called Reading Closely to Write. Each week …
Off or Off Of?
Imagine you’ve begun to revise your rough draft, that first, unkempt attempt to find the thoughts to carry your ideas out into the world. You’re reading closely what you wrote and you come upon this sentence: I told him to get his feet off of the table. Something bothers you and you can’t decide whether …
Where’s That?
When we read, does the meaning come to us through the words we see or the sounds those words subtly make in our mind? Both, surely, but it’s the balance that counts in finding our own written voice, the style that is our own. The words we write are ultimately the replication of the sounds …
Which Is or Which Are?
The key to understanding is precision—writing precisely and reading precisely. Language, though, is not mathematics: a word can mean many things while a numeral cannot, and so there are times when we may think we understand what a writer is saying, but a closer look reveals otherwise. Here’s an example: This is a collection of …