Monthly Archives: March 2010

Weekly Wrap-Up: March 26

What Is This? Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to…

Challenge Accepted: Dipping My Toes in the Shallow End

How’s that for an unenlightening title for a blog post? Of course, now you want to know what challenge I accepted, but you’re probably scoffing at my timidity in only checking out the shallow end (hey, I considered “Trying out the Baby Pool”!). Now that we have that totally uninformative first paragraph out of the…

Dashes and Hyphens: The Long and Short of It

If you write much at all, you are probably aware that you have a “favorite” punctuation mark. (By favorite, I don’t necessarily mean “favorite.” I mean favorite in the sense that you may overuse, or even abuse, it.) For some, it’s the ellipsis; for others, the semicolon. (See what I did there?) Some people thrive…

Weekly Wrap-Up: March 19

What Is This? Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is…

Weekly Wrap-Up: March 12

What Is This? Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is…

Instrospection on Writing

I’ve had a difficult time this week coming up with blog topics. I looked in my Idea Box, and was greeted with things like “commas,” “dashes and hyphens,” and “transitive and intransitive verbs.” Aren’t you glad you aren’t reading one of those topics right now? So I reached out to one of my writer friends, who said, “Why…

Weekly Word Count: March 5

What Is This? Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here. I use an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is…

National Grammar Day: A Quiz

Believe it or not, today–March 4–is National Grammar Day. To help celebrate this auspicious occasion, and to further grammar education throughout the Internet (always capitalized, incidentally), I have combed through hundreds–maybe even thousands–of blog entries to bring you the following quiz. What you are about to see are errors of usage I have collected over the…

O, Canada!

If I weren’t an American, I’d want to be a Canadian. I used to think I’d want to be an Aussie, or a Kiwi. But the past fortnight has brought home to me just what wonderful neighbors we have to the north. I’ve been privileged to count Canadians among my friends for many years; I’m…

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