Editing a Library Book? Shame on You.

A friend of mine posted a series of four photos on Facebook the other day, showing pages in a book she’d checked out from the library. (The book was Sue Grafton’s N Is for Noose, which I haven’t read.) Someone who’d read the book previously had taken it upon her- or...

Short Saturday: Stammer Verbs

I love it when I find an article that gives me a name for something I’ve noticed in editing, but didn’t know what to call it. Such is the case when I read this article at Jane Friedman’s website: “2 Stammer Verbs to Avoid in Your Fiction.” What the heck is a stammer...

#WordUse Series:
The Language Metamorphosis

We’ve talked a lot here about how the language we use—the words, the grammar—is a constantly evolving, living, almost breathing thing. (And still, still we want to stop that process! Human nature, I guess.) I’ve written about it in various ways, from...