This week, there have been many celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the emoticon, the now-ubiquitous use of punctuation marks to mark emotion in online text. On September 19, 1982, at 11:44 a.m., Scott Fahlman posted a message to a Carnegie Mellon bulletin board, proposing that :-) be used for marking jokes and :-( for non-jokes. Though Fahlman should get full credit for these pioneering smiley and frowny faces, there were in fact much earlier pioneers in expressive typography.  Continue reading...

In the crusade against flabby writing, we're often counseled to get rid of redundancies with a machete. We are to show no mercy for the likes of repeated ideas and words. But following this "rule" blindly, as with following any rule blindly, can result in text that fails to get its meaning across. There are times when redundancy is a boon to the text rather than a scourge.  Continue reading...

I like collecting quotes about writing. A while ago, I stumbled across this one attributed to Albert Einstein: "Look deep, deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better." How is that a quote about writing, you ask? Let me give you five reasons...  Continue reading...

"Calling a work of art ordinary is not ordinarily considered praise," Michael Lydon writes, "but I use the term as a lustrous laurel wreath." In particular, he singles out Anthony Trollope as a master of using language to depict ordinary human life: "not what we think life would, should, or could be like, but what life truly is like."  Continue reading...

Hi. What did i miss in class today. i want to keep up in english

I get a lot of e-mails. My favorites are the ones that come in from students who clearly like to prove to me how little they are using the skills I'm teaching. Thus, the group of teachers with whom I work decided to address the art of writing e-mail.  Continue reading...

An overlooked virtue of silence is its role as the desirable condition of creatures when there is not anything in particular that they need to say or do, and its great merit in being a state less likely to lead to trouble than its opposite: talk.  Continue reading...