What does it mean to say that one thing implies another? The derivation of the verb is instructive: to fold in, or to enwrap, and the first consonants of its original Latin verb (plicare) can be seen also in our verbs implicate, explicate, and even in the noun diploma, a piece of paper apparently originally …
Category Archives: Thoughts About Writing
More Human and Less Personal
That title phrase belongs to William Sloane, who in his work The Craft of Writing says that the real reader and real reading produce a delight which brings one “almost to the point of loss of personal identity.” We can see the phenomenon, he says, by watching a child read: Watch a child’s body when …
And, And, And
Which of these two versions of the same statement do you prefer: I like fresh vegetables and the risk of a frost had passed and I planted a garden, or I like fresh vegetables, so when the risk of a frost had passed, I planted a garden. The first sentence takes three thoughts and presents …
Criticizing Creation
In a number of earlier posts (It’s Time to Start Writing; Another Short Revision; First This, Then That), we have looked at the essential difference between the frame of mind we assume in undertaking an initial draft and the very different mind we put on to revise that first attempt. The British novelist E. M. …
A Game Played Seriously
Everywhere and always, decade by decade, the debate about the rules of grammar flares up. Some say there never was a permanent set of rules which everyone agreed upon, others say the rules are there but no one knows them, and still others say, rules or not, no one should tell them how to write …