Everybody knows there are rules regarding punctuation. This article isn't about them.

I'm on a lot of e-mail lists; a great many people feel I should be kept abreast of developments at their companies, career milestones of the artists they represent, legislative or electoral triumphs and outrages, and too much more. And though I find some of the news they herald noteworthy, more often than not they compensate for mundane content with an inappropriate, nay, giddy level of enthusiasm. The primary means of expressing this overwrought intensity? The exclamation point. Continue reading...

A few months ago, I ended up in Emergency for 15 hours. (Long story; it was nothing serious.) But the debacle caused me to miss a deadline. The client was the picture of understanding but for me, a former daily newspaper editor, it was deeply embarrassing. Continue reading...

Mark Twain, lauded by many as America's greatest humorist, has a strong online presence nearly a century after his death.

Following the Equator

Mark Twain's Mississippi

The Mark Twain Project

Twain Quotes

One day while reading the newspaper I happened across a small, four-inch item about a woman who infiltrated a drug ring and helped bring down a major distributor in a small town in Michigan. She was a single mother with several children, had no background in law enforcement, and had just lost her oldest son in a car accident. The news story did not give many details about the woman or how she managed to get on the drug task force. It only said that she did so at great personal risk. Continue reading...

Do you have a supermodel you can consult with? Headline notwithstanding, I don't mean Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell or even that inimitable diva, Tyra Banks. (I call this column the Tyra Banks approach because I'm Canadian and irony is in my nature.) Continue reading...

Want to get your poetry published, but you don't know where to start? Take some advice from these books.

Ordering the Storm

How to Publish Your Poetry

Poet Power

2009 Poet's Market

Advice to aspiring writers usually includes these words: "Write more." More words. More pages. More chapters, poems, articles.

But I have a different suggestion: To become a better writer, write less.

No, not less frequently. But with fewer words. Lots fewer. As in... no more than 140 characters' worth.

What? And why? Continue reading...