Grammar books often define a sentence as a complete thought, but that maxim, true as it oftentimes is, might not be good enough if we want to revise our work more carefully. Let’s say, for example, we wrote these two sentences in our first draft: One friend of mine builds log cabins for a living, …
Category Archives: Thoughts About Writing
Backstitching
Most of us most of the time write what is called expository prose, an expensive name for something quite common. Exposition is the presentation of facts, and expository writing, as opposed to description or argumentation, is nothing more (or less) than explaining something clearly and methodically to someone else. One principle of expository prose is …
Keeping a Commonplace Book
Not enough is said, I think, about the importance of regular reading and its practical effect on our writing. The connection between the two comes as a surprise to many of my students: isn’t reading what we do after we’ve written something? In fact, reading is what we should be doing before we write. Because …
Life Moves
Here is a beautifully written passage about the ocean coast by Rachel Carson, the pioneering and influential American nature writer. Carson is probably best known for her book Silent Spring, which in the early 1960s was instrumental in bringing attention to widening environmental dangers. The passage here is from her work The Edge of the …
Remarkable
It is remarkable to realize just what language is trying to do. Think about a situation you found yourself in recently, and then think about trying to relate that experience to someone else. Almost any circumstance you can remember involved countless things—all the almost innumerable objects and events and emotions and thoughts that made the …