Writing Tips

Formatting for Publication

June 25, 2012
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Imagine you’re going to a job interview. You care about the impression you’ll make, so you dress thoughtfully, according to the needs of the job. If you’re a man and the job is professional in nature, you probably wear a suit, shirt, and tie. You may pay special attention to your shoes, cleaning and shining [...]

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Pausing for Breath

December 31, 2011

As I write today, at the juncture of 2011 and 2012, I’m thinking about punctuation: how the end of a year feels like the end of a sentence. Period. A long breath. A sigh. Then a new one begins. How weeks feel as though they’re joined by the briefer breath of commas, and months by [...]

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Punctuation Frustration

December 1, 2011

There is almost always some reference to punctuation during our critique sessions – Commas not necessary around that phrase.  Place a comma there.  It needs quotation marks here. It’s enough to raise my pique When commas interrupt critique Those tiny glyphs invade a page Instill an inner syntax rage And why quotation marks, I ask [...]

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My Favorite Punctuation: Italics for Everything

October 27, 2011

I love italics but I didn’t always understand how to use them, that there are rules. According to The Best Little Grammar Book Ever! by Arlene Miller, we should italicize book titles, plays, operas, television series, CDs, and other complete works, but for parts of these works use quotes. In Arlene’s book, a great resource [...]

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One Writer’s Approach

August 23, 2011

This is the second in a series of articles by WE Writers about the writing process. – A word is not the same with one writer as with another. One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. ~ Charles Peguy Highly productive writers who think nothing of cranking [...]

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My Writing Process: Deadlines & Creativity

August 16, 2011

This is the first in a series of articles by WE Writers about the writing process. – Do deadlines spoil your creativity? Once, in conversation with a reporter, I asked what he thought about deadlines. Did they help or hinder his writing? He told me that if not for deadlines, nothing would get accomplished. I [...]

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