In this month's Language Lounge, our columnist Orin Hargraves looks forward to "real-time, hands-on, no-holds-barred action lexicography" at the big Dictionary Society hoedown in Chicago. Couldn't make the confab? No problem: Check out these linguists' websites for a taste of what Orin's talking about:

Café Mo

piloklok

English, Jack

A Roguish Chrestomathy

This lesson introduces students to the basic concept of a synonym and how varying vocabulary usage through synonyms can enhance their writing. Students will also synthesize their understanding of synonyms and the Visual Thesaurus by playing "Synonym Charades," a fun guessing game where students will figure out original book or movie titles based on synonym clues.  Continue reading...

Chip Scanlan, the journalist and educator who writes the terrific Chip on Your Shoulder blog, recently talked about an NPR story that got us interested. It was about how to describe voices. How would you describe Morgan Freeman's voice? How about Patsy Cline's? Or Truman Capote's? Curious? We thought so: Please click here.

A few weeks ago we spoke to novelist Laurel Dewey about her approach to creating the lead character of her acclaimed suspense novel, Protector. That interview got us thinking about the bigger picture: How did Laurel develop her can't-put-it-down, page-turning story? We discovered that Laurel trained as a screenwriter -- and had applied techniques for writing for the silver screen to writing her novel. We asked Laurel to tell us about that, and she graciously shared this detailed -- and invaluable -- conversation with us:  Continue reading...

These authors blog about writing and the writing life -- and review books, a move that has stirred a bit of controversy (read this LA Times article for the scoop).

Seedcake

Maud Newton

Silliman's Blog

Moby Lives

You have an e-mail, direct mail letter, web page, or other promotional piece to write. How much copy is required to do the job? One paragraph? Five? Twenty?

Most marketing writers struggle with this question. And for good reason. There's a lot of misinformation out there. One so-called expert claims that all marketing and PR copy should be long and involved. Another insists that short and concise works best these days.

 Continue reading...