Last month, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin announced that it had acquired a dictionary owned by David Foster Wallace, as part of its extensive Wallace archive. Wallace's copy of the American Heritage Dictionary was full of words that the late writer had circled. The Ransom Center released a sampling of Wallace's circled words, but now Slate's Browbeat blog has revealed the complete list. It's a fascinating collection.  Continue reading...

I'm a writer, not a videographer. But every once in a while I like to mix things up a bit. I fell upon the idea of creating my own video about writing thanks to Gretchen Rubin, and her blog The Happiness Project. On her truly marvelous site, she features two works she calls one-minute movies. Truth be told, her films are each a bit longer than a minute, but they inspired me.  Continue reading...

Michael Lydon, a well-known writer on popular music since the 1960s, has for many years also been writing about writing. Lydon's essays, written with a colloquial clarity, shed fresh light on familiar and not so familiar aspects of the writing art. Here Lydon explores how good writing is crafted sentence by sentence.  Continue reading...

Have you ever noticed that some words get used by journalists and no one else? In the latest installment of Language Corner in the Columbia Journalism Review, Merrill Perlman considers such newsy words as acrimonious, beset, and temblor. Read it here.

In honor of National Poetry Month, we present some valuable tips for introducing poetry to students from Michele Dunaway, who teaches English and journalism at Francis Howell High School in St. Charles, Missouri, when she's not writing best-selling romance novels.  Continue reading...

After an extended hiatus, we are pleased to announce the return of the Backstory series, in which authors share the secrets that inspired their fiction. In this installment we welcome back Katharine Weber, previously featured in the Backstory series for her novel Triangle. Here Katharine tells the story behind her new novel, True Confections.  Continue reading...

Apple's iPad tablet computer is being heralded as a technological advance on par with Gutenberg's invention of the printing press. Mere hyperbole? University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron takes a look, and considers how the iPad might revolutionize the way we interact with text.  Continue reading...