Reading Closely to Write Thursdays, January 28 through February 18 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. CT It’s an open secret that we learn to write better and better by reading more and more closely. On Thursday, January 28, Writing Smartly will begin a short course of four one-hour sessions called Reading Closely to Write. Each week …
Author Archives: rultimo
Commas Cut
That, in fact, is the first thing to remember about commas: they cut, separate, detach, isolate. Their very name derives from a Greek verb, koptein, which means to cut, and the word comma originally signified a clause, what we know grammatically now as a group of words with a subject and verb, but which originally …
Upcoming Seminar
Who and Whom, I and Me: What Does Case Mean in Grammar? Tuesday, January 12 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. CT Most of us have puzzled over which of these two constructions is correct: between you and I or between you and me. And many of us have convinced ourselves that we’ll never figure out the …
Two Fine Sentences
Some years ago, the ecologist and philosopher David Abram wrote a fascinating book entitled The Spell of the Sensuous, a discussion of how we humans perceive ourselves in relation to the natural world and what role language and perception play in that relationship. In the afterword to the book’s twentieth-anniversary edition, discussing the original promotion …
Happy New Year
It is customary on the first day of a new year to wish one another health, prosperity, and happiness—a trio welcome anytime, but perhaps this year a little more excitedly so as they appear at the threshold. We proclaim health first, for reasons too obvious and urgent. The word health is akin to whole and …