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 the best writers speak to us through their singular literary styles.  Continue reading...

A few days before I was married, almost 21 years ago, I was walking the eight blocks from our apartment to the daily newspaper at which I worked and, at a stoplight, happened to glance downward. Yikes! I was wearing two different shoes.  Continue reading...

A Spanish educational ad campaign using what appears to be "bad English" has University of Illinois linguist Dennis Baron thinking about the spread of international English beyond the Anglophone world.  Continue reading...

Erin Brenner of Right Touch Editing provides "bite-sized lessons to improve your writing" on her engaging blog The Writing Resource. We previously heard from Erin about the serial comma, and now she offers tips for using commas for direct address.  Continue reading...

We welcome back Stan Carey, a professional editor from Ireland who writes entertainingly about the English language on his blog Sentence First. Here Stan cuts through the red tape to take a long look at the word bureaucracy.  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...