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You forgot to mention contusions.

When I was perhaps 6 years old, I fell out of a beech tree at Grigg's park. My parents watched proudly as I monkeyed through the tree with abandon on a summer night in 1976. That's how I envisioned them feeling, anyway. The vivid memories I won't ever forget, but unfortunately, to be honest, they're the ones from the ER just after, and of my having my broken ankle set by a demonic ortho resident. My brother got off easy. He only suffered a double wrist sprain. If not for my landing on him, after having lost my grip and fallen some 20 feet, it'd probably have gone far worse. Ah, to be young--and immortal!

They were offered for edification, to make a certain point � not to titillate, absorb, or appeal to interest in their contents.

Not by those names, as far as I can tell.
My copy is not in obvious sections. A quick run-thru shows me:

Anybody can learn to write. Nobody can teach you how. The best anyone can do is help you learn. So the first crucial element in the craft of writing is the writer. If that's you, then you're the first thing that you'll have to deal with. You can do it. Only you. Nobody else can do it for you.

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Get rid of the "I'm no writer" error, parts A and B.

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"Write the way you talk" � well, not exactly.

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An old, familiar beginning for courses and discussions on writing is to define writing as "a means of communicating thought. ...

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Aids and Barriers to Communication in Writing

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Abbreviations and Acronyms � It's good to shorten...

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Preview: Like any other language, English comprises two major components:...

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SHIBBOLETHS & SUPERSTITIONS

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TECHNICAL TERMS versus BRAIN BILGE

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THE BEST ENGLISH FOR WRITING

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n an earlier post in this series, I mentioned editing a draft in ...

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There you have it, Amigos � the last installment in the boiled-down on-line version of the boiled-down five-part seminar version of the old semester-long course, "Make Every Word Tell." My seminar syllabus also includes some appendices, at least one of which ("A Guide to Good Style") I'll probably add � in installments � to the above.

NOTE: I wrote and distributed this guide to my writer friends...

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The five crucial properties of the printed page are � in this order � :
� READABILITY
� READABILITY
� readability
� readability
� appearance

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The next installment � A Guide to Good Style � 6-b � will start listing specific points. Here's the first one:

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... So get 'em and read 'em while they're cheap. You'll never spend a few bucks more productively or wisely. You'll see also how a war correspondent ought to cover a war.

Got all that and more � thanks!

OK.

I'd be happy to archive the latest for you.

Read E.A. Poe's *The Poetic Principle*. It applies to all writing. Basically, it says to make every word count. Otherwise, be like lots of people who think if 50 words will work, 500 words will work better.

Poe was a giant of the literature of his era. Too bad his biographer hated him and saddled him with a horrible reputation.

� A neighbor of ours in a subyuk of Baltimore lay down for an afternoon nap in her upstairs bed room. Not quite asleep, she was startled fully alert by a cheery greeting from her neighbors' five-year-old daughter near her bed �

"Hi, Mrs Steiner!"

The girl was standing high in the tree just a few feet outside the open window, with one foot on one limb and one hand grasping a limb just above her head, while she swung the other foot nonchalantly to and fro.




� Every now 'n' then while she did her house-hold chores, Carol Anne peeked out a window to be sure that our five-year-old son, playing in the yard, was all right.

Then one time, she couldn't see him, in the front yard or the back yard. Alarmed (we lived on a busy Prescott, Arizona, street with fast traffic), she went outside and called him �

"Ben!"

Ben coolly rappelled down from a high limb in the tall alligator-bark juniper �

"Yes'm?


Both kids had what Mark Twain called "the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces" � and then some.

What set Twain apart from "writers" was his gift for "making stuff up".Excellent workmanship in an ugly house goes un-noticed .

Just had an interesting e-mail chat with a fellow writer (very good, very able friend) about the use of the serial comma (the modern "A, B and C" versus the classic "A, B, and C).

Here's my side of the exchange, FWIW2U �


Has the classical use of the serial comma ever disturbed your reading?

Darts 'n' flames, NE1?

Ken,

Personally speaking, the thought of intravenously using a Haitian greatly disturbs me!

I, too, am a serial comma abuser. Or is it; "I, too am a serial comma abuser."?

Ed

I wasn't cognizant that commas were causing contention. I've always considered them kind companions. Keep commas common.

Never said contention.

Said confusion.

Gave example.

Big difference.

I never said that you said contention.
Some folks, evidently (and it's news to me), are contending against 'traditional' usage. I now contend against them.

Classical use has never disturbed me; the lack of that final comma certainly has the potential to give a reader the hiccups.

Just had a discussion with a university professor about whether to use the form judgement or the form judgment.

I prefer judgement and have abundant precedent for it.

There've been a plethora of spellings in English since the early 13th century � over a dozen that I know of �

� iuggement
� iugement
� gugement
� iuiement
� iugument
� iugemente
� iewgement
� iugisment
� yugement
� iugment
� iudgment
� iudgement
� judgement
� judgment

(Note that the e was included more often than the d was.)

1236 � �To bringe is neueu mid streng�e to stonde to Iugement.�

You pays yo' money 'n' you takes yo' pick, but since the soft g takes the e (or i) as regularly as the q takes the u, it seems to me that judgement is the more logical extension of judge. Why should judgment be the exception to that natural rule?

My local ice cream parlor sells me a delicious flavor they call fudgemint. That's all the authority to keep the 'e' that I need.

ghoti=fish.

gh as in rough
o as in women
ti as in action

I don't write as well when my hands are cold.