http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/?utm_source=rss Writers Talk About Writing Copyright 2012, Thinkmap Inc. All Rights Reserved. en Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/images/common/logo_on_white.gif http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/?utm_source=rss Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3129?utm_source=rss We'd like to welcome Merrill Perlman, who writes the "Language Corner" column for Columbia Journalism Review, as our newest regular contributor! In this column, she's grabbing at "straws": straw polls, straw men, and straw bashers. Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3129 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3126?utm_source=rss Erin Brenner of Right Touch Editing provides "bite-sized lessons to improve your writing" on her engaging blog The Writing Resource. Here Erin offers a "word story" on cacophony, which she finds to be "a very apt term for the digital world." Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3126 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3122?utm_source=rss One aspect of the computing world that we're all deeply involved in (whether we realize it or not) is the specialized field of databases. In this article, I thought it might be fun to look at the terminology of that involvement from the database's point of view. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3122 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3110?utm_source=rss We're happy to feature another installment of James Harbeck's Word Tasting Notes, this time on geoduck: "This word, at first sight, seems to be a paradoxical mix: geo says 'earth' to us, and duck says 'waterfowl.' Put them together and you have something that is, as the saying goes, neither fish nor fowl." Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3110 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3109?utm_source=rss Merrill Perlman looks at the way that the "drink/drank/drunk" verb paradigm is changing, and advises you how to derive "drunk" (but please, don't drive drunk). Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3109 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3108?utm_source=rss While the semicolon has long been a favorite topic of discussion at grammarian cocktail parties, the fact that this intermediate piece of punctuation has leapt from its place in linguistics to make a cameo appearance in not one, but two Broadway shows, is surely a sign that things are currently very right, and very write, on the Great White Way. Tue, 24 Jan 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3108 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3106?utm_source=rss To be or not to be, that is the question. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. Happy families are all alike, unhappy families are unhappy each in their own way. What do these famous sentences have in common? They are all general statements. Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3106 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3099?utm_source=rss When to use "who" and when "whom" -- this is the subject of our inquiry (and the object of our search). Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3099 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3095?utm_source=rss When I started writing back in high school, I developed the nervous practice of producing a sentence and then going back to edit it, immediately. Perhaps you do the same thing? I advise you to take a hard look at your own writing and, break the instant-editing habit as quickly as possible. Wed, 11 Jan 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3095 Word Count http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3094?utm_source=rss "Writers struggle to get the right words down in the right order, to put every comma, or nearly every comma, in its proper place; and readers follow the writers' final sequence of words and commas as printed on the page," Michael Lydon writes, "but what happens between writer and reader is far more amorphous, more emotional than the precision needed for the process would suggest." Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:00:00 UTC http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wc/3094