It is one of the fundamentals of writing that every word must count. Consider these two sentences: the bank president hired three new people whose job was to guard the guards, and the bank president hired three new people whose job it was to guard the guards. The only difference between the two is the …
Author Archives: rultimo
Freedom Struggling
Jacob Needleman was an American philosopher and teacher who articulated in clear, straightforward prose the basic questions of philosophy which have preoccupied civilizations from the ancient world to the present. Among his many titles are Real Philosophy: An Anthology of Universal Search for Meaning; Money and the Meaning of Life; and The American Soul: Rediscovering …
Chopping Choppiness
The exercise of revising a rough paragraph of simple sentences can concentrate our attention and sharpen our skills, resulting in a more natural flow of ideas and expression. We should remember that what is called a final draft is just the last iteration in a line of approximating productions. There can logically be no last …
The Curious Origin of School
The traditional study of the language arts finds its justification in the belief that self-reflection is the special characteristic of human beings, and that this ability to recognize oneself as a person is possible—or even begins to be possible—through the cultivated use of language. One department of language study is called etymology, and under that …
Separate But Connected
Here’s another chance to sharpen our grammatical tools. Is this sentence correct: he is one of those persons, who is always on time. We will need either two knives or one double-edged sword to examine this deceptively simple sentence, one blade for grammar and the other for punctuation. When we revise our work, we should …