Authors call the hidden part of a character’s life their “backstory.” When I was acting in plays, directors might ask me to decide what my character was doing before the scene began. Since my character is supposed to be a real human being, he has a life outside of what appears on the stage or on the page. Every character is like an iceberg – there is more to the character than appears on the surface. If it’s a minor…
Let’s talk about something good. Here is a variety of words for good things, based on ancient words for “good”: Latin bonus and Greek eu. Good words from Latin In Rome, bonus was the Latin word for “good, noble, kind, honest, brave.” Since Latin gave birth to the Romance languages of Europe, words such as bon, bien, bueno and buon are found today in French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian. English speakers commonly use the French expressions “bon voyage” (“Have…
To create an anagram, you rearrange the letters of a word or phrase to form a different word or phrase. For example, the word section is an anagram for notices and vice versa. A “perfect” anagram uses all the letters, no more, no less. But sometimes letters are repeated or omitted. Before the modern alphabet was formalized, let alone modern spelling, anagrams could be less formal too, since I and J or U and V were still interchangeable. The anagram…
This post lists words derived from words in other languages as a result of folk etymology, a process by which speakers adopt the foreign terms after revising them by using existing elements from their native language. acorn: This word is descended from the Old English term aecerne, meaning “tree nut” but originally referring in various forms in Germanic languages to the trunk of a tree; by folk etymology, the current spelling derived from a false association with ac (“oak”) and…
This post points out common errors committed when reporting what has been said or written. Each example is followed by a discussion of the problem and a revision that provides a solution. 1. She pointed out that, “Speed matters — the faster an organization learns, the faster it evolves.” The quotation, in isolation, is a complete sentence and is properly capitalized. But when dropped into a sentence, as in the example above, it becomes part of the sentence, just as…
Are you stuck for something to write about? Or are you looking for prompts to use in the classroom? These prompts are aimed at middle school students (roughly age 11 – 14) – but younger or older writers might enjoy trying them as well. I’ve split them into different types of prompts – imaginative prompts, non-fiction/essay prompts, short story prompts and journaling prompts – but feel free to use them in any way you like. For instance, you might choose…
This post lists and defines words derived from the Greek term gramma, which pertains not only to a small weight, as in gram and compound words in which gram is the base, but also to letters (hence telegram) and writing (hence grammar). Words That Begin with Gramgram: a metric unit of weight equivalent to one one-thousandth of a kilogram, the base unit of weight in the metric system; gram is also an unrelated term for any of various legumes, such…
It used to be that when people thought of songwriting, they didn’t think of great writing. Then Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature. Dylan wasn’t the first songwriter whose work has been respected by literary critics. You might be surprised how much ancient poetry was originally written to be sung. From certain vanished cultures, songs are the only literature that has survived. Before the invention of mass media technology, songs were the mass media – the original news…
Addyson, a sixth grader who loves to write, asks, “How can I learn to spell better?” That’s certainly a worthy question, and over the years, we’ve given many suggestions for better spelling. I Before E, Except After C How Do I Become a Better Speller? Five Spelling Rules for “Silent Final E” The Six Spellings of “Long E” The Eight Spellings of “Long O” The Spellings of “Shun” But when young writers ask for advice on spelling or grammar, I…
You’ve probably heard writers (or teachers, or critics) talk about “style” in writing. What exactly is style, though? It can be tough to pin down, because there are a variety of things we might be looking at when we talk about style. In most cases, though, style is about the individual word choices and the structure of sentences. While an author might have particular character-types that s/he tends to use, or a penchant for complicated plots, those things are usually…