Writing Clearly

At a corporate training I taught last week, participants asked me to clarify the meaning of the above word pairs. Since these words seem to perplex many people, here are simple definitions. Affect (verb) This word has many meanings in the dictionary. It can refer, as a noun, to one’s emotional state. As a verb, […]

On April 11, 2011, the following article by David Brooks appeared in the New York Times. Brooks comments on the ubiquity and importance of metaphorical thinking, even outside the realms of literature and poetry. More than we might realize, we think and speak in metaphors, and whether we realize it or not, the metaphors we

On April 13, 2011, Jeff Haden published the following article on BNET.com. His points are well taken, so I am sharing them here with the author’s permission. I’ve received a number of emails recently from readers asking how they can improve their writing skills. Here are 10 tips: Always eliminate the obvious. For example, I

I saw a bumper sticker recently that said, “You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead.” This would be funny if it were not incorrect. The past tense and the past participle of lead is led. A general leads his troops into battle. Napoleon led his men into Russia just

On October 22, 2011, Henry Hitchings, author of the upcoming book, The Language Wars: A History of Proper English, wrote a column in The Wall Street Journal titled “Is This the Future of Punctuation?”. In it, he proposes that English is rapidly becoming more oriented toward the spoken language than toward the conventions of written