If you were raised among college graduates who only spoke grammatically correct English at home, you have an advantage above the majority of us, who grew up speaking local slang.…
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Yuja Wang may be the most gifted pianist in the world today, but it didn’t happen by accident. She grew up in a musical family, began her piano studies at…
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Sometimes we want a comma before the subordinate conjunction because, and at other times, we don’t. If we're not careful, the presence or absence of a comma can result in…
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Sue Fliess, children’s book author and California dreamer sang a wonderful parody of Anna Kendrick’s Cups (When I’m Gone), with lyrics that all writers can appreciate.
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Instructors sometimes tell us that without conflict, we have no story. While that’s true, it’s important to understand why. A sword fight has plenty of action and conflict, but it…
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In 1955, a McDonald’s hamburger cost fifteen cents, and for a dime, you could add fries. That was before anybody thought of supersizing. In 1970, a dozen eggs cost .62,…
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OK is an abbreviation. Years ago, the proper spelling was O.K., but we’re now so much in love with acronyms that we’ve dropped the periods from many abbreviations, including this…
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If a salesman knocked on your door, selling punctuation, you should know that semicolons are next to useless, not worth the cost. Would you buy periods because they are in…
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“Truth is stranger than fiction.” This quote has been attributed to many great writers, so it might be good to stop and consider what this means. With fiction we can…
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Frank Ball used to collect stamps, coins, and rocks. Now he’s a collector of words with unexpected meanings, which he calls “daffynitions.” Here are five that were posted recently: Association…
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Character is a critical key to becoming a person of quality, and it starts in the home!
