Saturday, February 19, 2011

Gossip Writing Sizzles With Verbal Striptease

To produce an effective writing piece, connecting with the targeted audience is crucial. If gossip writing is your pen's flavor, check out Michael Musto's tips for turning up the heat:

  How to Serve Dish

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Lyric check and Spell check, Where Art Thou?

Three days after the Green Bay Packers doused Big Ben’s flame, it’s not the overhyped ads, but Christiana Aguilera’s lyrical misfire that shines blindingly. Before the final note’s fade, Facebook and Twitter were already clogged with thumbs down “disses.”   
So now, in hopes of casting a blackout on Aguilera’s Super Bowl flop, the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league baseball team, have rolled out the redemption carpet with a repeat performance invitation. Was the singer was so smug that she dismissed adequate preparation as passé? If so, she was dead wrong to do so, especially on Jerry Jones’ colossal stage.   
Similarly, utmost quality is my expectation whenever I open the New York Times, a publication hailed journalistically superior. Even if its digital dependence has rendered the proofreader jobless, factual accuracy void of misspellings is not exactly a demand extreme. Discerning eyes don’t long to peer at Steele when the correct spelling is Steel, as in Danielle, the famed author. In “Repeat Offenses,” Phillip B. Corbett exposes the newspaper’s repetitive faults.
Whether Aguilera or the New York Times, the lingering question remains: “Lyric check and spell check, where art thou?”    
Sources:

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Sealing the Sentence Deal



During a discussion at a cocktail party about communication prowess, a banker echoed: “Some of my college-educated colleagues don’t know Diddly.” As a business professional engaged in various industries, I’ve experienced the stupefied effects that incomplete and ill-formed sentences often evoke. Since most people realize spell check’s fallibility, you’d think they’d proofread more carefully, right? Wrong.
It’s not merely a matter of proofreading but first and foremost, one must be familiar with the art of sentence construction. NYT columnist Stanley Fish who penned, “How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One” dishes that most of us aren’t up to par when it comes to writing a sentence. Giving Fish’s new book more than a distracted glance might help cure this communication ill.  
Here’s an excerpt from NPR:
“Fish is something of a sentence connoisseur, and he says writing a fine sentence is a delicate process — but it's a process that can be learned. He laments that many educators approach teaching the craft the wrong way — by relying on rules rather than examples.”

Analyzing great sentences "will tell you more about ... what you can possibly hope to imitate than a set of sterile rules that seem often impossibly abstract," Fish tells NPR's Neal Conan.

A good sentence may be easy to pick out, but learning to understand what makes it great, says Fish, will help a student become a stronger writer and a "better reader of sentences."

“Just as a student of art must learn how to describe the merits of a painting, aspiring writers must be able to articulate what constitutes a well-crafted sentence.”

Read the article in its entirety here: