There is a fine old classic work on punctuation entitled Mind the Stop by G. V. Carey, published in Britain in 1939. A stop is a Briticism for any of the marks of punctuation (comma, semicolon, colon, and period) which intend to pause the reader to some degree at some specific point in a sentence. …
Author Archives: rultimo
Understanding, Enjoyment, Love
The purpose of what we’re writing will determine its style. Instructions are best left as simple and direct as the protocol will allow, but in a novel a lengthy passage meant to move the heart in describing a tender moment between lovers may take long and winding sentences to bring the scene poignantly before us. …
The Arts of the Mind
A convincing case could be made, I think, that if ever there were a moment when looking back at the origin of an idea could give us a needed perspective, now might be such a time. We seem to have lost the plot in much of the schooling we confer on our young people. Good …
Hunting for Grammar
Precision, concision—confusion. Being precise and concise are hallmarks of good writing, but too much of any good thing turns into its opposite. I saw recently a community board posting on social media similar to this one, and it offers a review exercise for us to figure out just what went wrong. Here is my facsimile …
Our Imagination
Just what is our imagination? We can’t get very far in any thinking about the arts, including the art of writing, before we find ourselves using the word to refer to some kind of thing we sense is going on in our heads to produce a work others can see or hear or read. But …