Use An Apostrophe

The right ways to use an apostrophe (in illustrated form) from:
How To Use An Apostrophe - The Oatmeal

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NYTimes Blog Gems

Notes from the newsroom on grammar, usage and style. Great editing posts to help writers from the NYTimes After Hours blog:

• Words We Love Too Much
• Words to Watch
• May, Might, Muddle
• When Spell-Check Can’t Help
• Red Pencils Ready?
• Subject, Meet Verb

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Citing Electronic Sources

"Cite Your Sites" first popped into mind. Cute. Dumb SEO. Clever wordplay. All of the above. This proposed title is a nice play on rhyming words and the cliché "set your sights," but it would confuse search engines and not help people looking for information on the title used.

Paula Offutt's comment about the lame Anderson Plagiarism Apology prompted this post. Anderson's lame claim was that plagiarism in his recent book resulted from an inability to find a way to cite electronic sources. Such information is available in any style manual. Finding the citation styles online for free is another matter. Presumably Anderson can afford to own current copies of all style guides. Where was the publisher's editor in all this? What about a fact checker? It is difficult to check facts with no sources cited.

If you don't understand about citing sources at all, read the information on the Long Island University (C.W. Post Campus) Library web page on Citations. I particularly like:

Use this rule of thumb: If you knew a piece of information before you started doing research, generally you do not need to credit it. You also do not need to cite well-known facts, such as dates, which can be found in many encyclopedias. All other information such as quotations, statistics, and ideas should always be cited in your papers.

Advice on which style to use, Citation Style for Research Papers, also applies to nonacademic articles and books:

# APA: psychology, education, and other social sciences.
# MLA: literature, arts, and humanities.
# AMA: medicine, health, and biological sciences.
# Turabian: designed for college students to use with all subjects.
# Chicago: used with all subjects in the 'real world' by books, magazines, newspapers, and other non-scholarly publications.

This all reminds me to write on Site vs. Cite vs. Sight.

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Roget's II Online

Yes, I use the Big Words every once in a while. What? It can't hurt you to look one up now and then. Expand your vocabulary. It make for richer description, dialogue, and characters in your writing. Start with a word you know and find some synonyms:

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus is now online.

One can be more precise, express oneself more colorfully, or avoid repetition.

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SDPEN Listing Available

Google just alerted me that my listing now appears in the roster of the San Diego Professional Editors Network (SDPEN). The group's website is interesting, especially for writers who have never worked with an editor. It is several levels deep, with useful information about the value of professional editing. The section on Reference Tools is particularly useful for writers.

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Writing Words: Publishing Terms

Did you know some books have lovely headbands which serve no practical purpose? And if you think PMS has to do with moody women, you haven't met the Pantone Matching System. Rachel Toor reveals these and many more esoteric publishing terms in A Publishing Primer at The Chronicle of Higher Education online. My favorite entry is the very last one with its little snarky jibes at some controversial authors:

Warranty: Your promise to the publisher that you are who you say you are (Margaret B. Jones!), that you have written the work (Kaavya Viswanathan!), that everything you say is true is true (James Frey!), and that you have the right to be named as author.

Via The Practicing Writer Vol. 5, No. 8: September 2008 newsletter from Dr. Erika Dreifus.

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Writing in Leap Years

Did you know the exceptions to the rule that every four years is Leap Year (has a February 29 on the calendar)? Look what I discovered at Ancestor Search thanks to Catherine Tulley at Freelance-Zone.com blog:

Leap Year Rule

All years divisible by 4 are leap years unless the year can be divided by 100. There is, however, an exception to this 100 year rule exception. Any year that can be divided by 400 is a leap year. So while the years 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not leap years because they are divisible by 100, the year 2000, because it is divisible by 400, was a leap year.

Why should writers care? For nonfictioneers, accuracy. For fictionalists, veracity. Pretty much the same meaning. In journalism the need for accuracy is self-explanatory. Journalists write about facts, so they'd want to get the date correct, writing about a past or a future event. In fiction, the need for correctness lies more in the tone or authority to be projected throughout the piece. In sci-fi and fantasy, it may not matter at all. For an historical romance, it may be critical to getting published (fact-checkers may give demerits for wrong days/dates).

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Writing Rhetorical Devices

Do you know your antimetabole from your zuegmas? If so, you're all set for the Rhetoric Test Robert Harris offers on his site about de virtues of devices. I'm not sure this would have helped me when I searched for the name of the little quotations or thingies writers sometimes put at the beginnings of chapters (see, I've forgotten the name AGAIN!) Harris just lists sixty rhetorical devices with links to a page of explanations, but that in itself is interesting to read. You might learn of a "trick" to use "to improve the effectiveness, clarity, and enjoyment of your writing." This is part of style, Harris says:

While style is probably best learned through wide reading, comprehensive analysis and thorough practice, much can be discovered about effective writing through the study of some of the common and traditional devices of style and arrangement. By learning, practicing, altering, and perfecting them, and by testing their effects and nuances for yourself, these devices will help you to express yourself better and also teach you to see the interrelatedness of form and meaning, and the psychology of syntax, metaphor, and diction both in your own writing and in the works of others.

Which is the academic equivalent of "how to spark up your works".

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Writing Books to be Published

Here's a unique offer -- a 750-page FREE eBook by published author, J.A. Konrath, titled The Newbie's Guide To Publishing Book. He is, as he says in the subtitle to his blog, The Newbie's Guide to Publishing,

author of the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels thriller novels Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, and Rusty Nail

and a couple more, I think. The book is, of course, a downloadable .PDF file. As such, it requires .PDF reading software that you can obtain also for free, such as the Reader from Adobe. Truly an insider's path to getting published!

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Christian Writing

PLEASE ENTER THE CONTEST! DEADLINE JULY 10

A growing and popular genre of writing is the Christian sector, especially in countries where the majority of religions are various flavors of Christianity (a.k.a. the U.S. and U.K.) A comprehensive resource for Christian writers seems to be Sally Stuart's Christian Writers' Market Guide. The site is only a few years old, but the owners claim their guide book to markets is in its 23 year. Stuart also offers books by other authors on Christian writing, as well as consulting on manuscripts and contracts.

You can also find lists of magazine and book publishers that accept such articles and query guidance about each and a general list of organizations and web addresses for writers. Stuart also offers an impressive list of conferences -- I counted over 40 for the rest of this year including one in San Diego in September.

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Quotations for Writing

The Quotations Page claims to be "the oldest quotation site on the Web, established 1994. We have over 26,000 quotations online from over 3,100 authors, and more are added daily." That would make it probably the first on the WWW, which began about the same time. This resource also has a forum and a blog and several other features listed in the left column.

One feature interested me: My Page. If you register (free) with the site, you can automatically save quotations from any part of the website. Deletions from you personal list are also allowed at the click of a mouse. I can see how, after diligently searching out quotations on a particular subject, this would be an easier method to collect them in bulk instead of tedious individual cut-and-paste operations.

You might want to carefully read the site's disclaimer to determine if you can or cannot use the material found there in your own publication or manuscript. If not, at least this resource might point you toward a quotable primary source.

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20 Essential Writing References

By now most people know my stand on citing Wikipedia as a source or reference: as Borat said, "not so good". Sure it's fine for general knowledge. Consult it to get an idea of what a topic is about or for leads to authoritative resources. I was happy to see my stand echoed by Gideon Addington in his post at Mindful Ink:

Whenever I first begin a project I almost always go and overview it through Wikipedia. It’s a great introduction to a subject, also connecting you easily to other related ideas, people and places.

He continues on to list Beyond Wikipedia: 20 References You Can't Do Without. They are "mostly resources anyone can use (with a couple of notable exceptions)." Two of them you may need to access through a school or library account are JSTOR for journals and the Oxford English Dictionary. (Regular readers know of my lust for my own OED or subscription.)

In a followup column elsewhere, Books on the Web, these websites are listed as good places to find textbook references:

1. Classics in the History of Psychology
2. The Online Books Page
3. eBrary.com
4. Google Books
5. Project Gutenberg
   

That last reference reminded me of a recent question on a forum. Someone in an isolated part of the world wanted to research a particular topic but had limited access to the Internet. That's a tough one. Can't get to a library, bookstores, or online; presumably can't afford to buy reference material. What to do? My advice would be: something else. Forget "write what you know". Write what you can research. Even if you know about a topic, you still need to be able to cite sources.

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Master English Words - VOA

When I was growing up in southwestern Ohio, way out in the country near a tiny town called Mason, a field of very tall radio towers reached toward the clouds. From far enough away, on a clear day, a viewer could see the towers were topped by large antennas. A little sign, I think, indicated they were broadcasting Voice of America programs. We were going to talk the mean Russians into submission. (It was the Cold War era.)


Eventually I learned what the Voice of America did and then thought little about the activity until I discovered the digital version, VOA News.com. Better yet, the service provides a Wordmaster section subtitled "A Weekly Analysis of American English". It features grammar, idioms, slang, regional English, topical issues and an archive of articles/programs. What a wonderful resource for American writers, as well as its intended audience overseas. And it is a virtual wellspring of more resources. Peruse the list of programs, and you'll see what I mean.

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100 Words Writers Should Know

From abjure, abrogate, abstemious, acumen, antebellum, auspicious to vortex, winnow, wrought, xenophobe, yeoman, and ziggurat. How many of those words do you know? My Google toolbar doesn't recognize "ziggurat", but then it doesn't recognize the word "toolbar" either, so what does it know? You may have heard these words and think that you know what they mean in a context, but would you know how to use them correctly in your writing? For all my personal wordiness, a friend kindly elucidated the actual meaning of noblesse oblige for me recently. Did I ever have it backwards in my mind! The editors of American Heritage dictionaries selected 100 words that they think all high school students (and their parents) should know. See all the words in this release where the ed said:

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language."

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Research Shortcuts for Writers

Everybody loves shortcuts, right? Here's an interesting collection of them: StartSpot. The home page links to resources for finding information more quickly on books, movies, employment, genealogy, charities, food, government, headlines, homework, libraries, museums, people, shopping and travel. "So what?" you may say, "Any search engine does that." But this isn't a search engine, it is human-edited lists for specific purposes. They say:

Our editorial team carefully evaluates and selects the best, most relevant and most interesting online resources for a topic, then organizes the information to make it easily accessible.

Take a look at BookSpot, for example. Glancing down the menu in the left column, it appears that most anything you'd like to find is covered. When you click on a specific topic, you don't find references to everything (and have to wade your way through the dross). The editors have chosen the most useful links to present to visitors, cutting down on the time it takes to do the research.

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Blogs for Aspiring Writers

Bear with me for another day of conflagration crisis mode. I'm still in my home, but the threat to my community is somewhat less as the weather conditions improve a bit.

Here's another post about a compilation of resources for writers. I'm not certain who runs the Online Education Database, but I discovered A Writer's Edge listed as number four on its 150 Useful, Educational, and Inspirational Blogs for Aspiring Writers.

What do they say about this place? "Write, write correctly, write anything!". Well, thanks for the plug, OEDB folks, back atcha!

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Write Boring Science Lit

From: How to write Consistently Boring Scientific Literature

Table 1. Top-10 list of recommendations for writing consistently
boring publications.


Avoid focus

Avoid originality and personality

Write l o n g contributions

Remove implications and speculations

Leave out illustrations

Omit necessary steps of reasoning

Use many abbreviations and terms

Suppress humor and flowery language

Degrade biology to statistics

Quote numerous papers for trivial statements

The previous quotation is from a paper or article by Kaj Sand-Jensen of the Freshwater Biological Laboratory, Univ. of Copenhagen, Denmark. I wasn't quite sure if it is a serious academic piece or meant to be a humorous send-up of serious academic literature. It hauntingly reminded me of working on the thesis for my M.A. Otherwise, I think Sand-Jensen's points are well-taken directions for any nonfiction writing, especially anything meant to persuade others or to support a point of view (like op-ed articles, letters to the editor and personal essays).

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More U.S. Copyright Fees

From the U.S. Copyright Office - Fee Adjustments: 2007:

Sometime between October 1, 2007, and January 1, 2008: The Office will charge a fee for contents titles listed on an application for a collection, for example, for the titles of songs contained on an album. The Office will include these titles in its public registration records to make them more comprehensive and more useful to those who search the records. A fee will be charged for each title: $1 for each contents title in an electronic filing: $3 for each contents title on a paper application.

So, while they've lowered the rate to register from $45 to $35 if you register electronically, they've added more fees for those who register collections. Pity the poor poets and song writers!

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OSU Free Books Online

Seeing the flooding in Ohio featured on NBC news this morning reminded me of the interesting reference website I found at the The Ohio State University Press. Its Open Access Initiative makes over 70 books available for download in .PDF format. The site claims:

All titles available this way, whether old or new, have gone through the exact same peer review process as our printed books. Any book that carries our imprint--no matter what medium is being used--has been approved by our Editorial Board after a thorough vetting process.

The collection spans the gamut of subjects. I'm not sayin' that this is necessarily a place to start research (although you could), but it is a resource to check for a free copy of a primary reference.

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Linking Strategies

Here's a reference I've BOLO'd for quite a while, hoping to raise my Google PageRank from 5 to 6 Sky Rocket to the Top of Google. I've already written about finding information indicating that quality incoming links were the key, but how to acquire them eluded me. In this article, Greg Furey suggests some linking strategies to get more Googlejuice:

* post articles on content websites
* use articles for viral marketing
* add link to forum signature

I've written about my one (bad) experience with posting an article on a content provider site, but maybe I gave up too soon. I've never tried the second approach--seems too much like begging (asking others to carry my articles on their websites or newsletters), and I've always done #3, but it hasn't helped. At all. My rank has been at 5 for AGES! I'm still trying to figure out how to get links from sites with PageRanks of 6 and higher. Outright begging just isn't my style and other than offer a reciprocal link or advertising, what is there to do? That seems too much like buying a link. I'm beginning to wonder why I care. Oh, year, as Furey says, "one of the key success factors to getting loads of free Google traffic to your website is increasing page rank."

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Researching on the Web

Johns Hopkins University's Sheridan Libraries offers help for evaluating information you may run across on the web:

All information, whether in print or by byte, needs to be evaluated by readers for authority, appropriateness, and other personal criteria for value. If you find information that is "too good to be true", it probably is. Never use information that you cannot verify. Establishing and learning criteria to filter information you find on the Internet is a good beginning for becoming a critical consumer of information in all forms. "Cast a cold eye" (as Yeats wrote) on everything you read. Question it. Look for other sources that can authenticate or corroborate what you find. Learn to be skeptical and then learn to trust your instincts.

This warning/admonition is especially true for writers who search for accurate information, whether it be for background on a tale of medieval madness or an article on carbon nanotubes. The article excerpted is a good starting point if you're just learning how to use the Internet to find information for your writing projects.

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Writers Internet Research Resources

A generation that can't remember life without PCs, the World Wide Web, and/or Wikipedia may never know the joy of browsing through a real life encyclopedia. The venerable Encyclopedia Britannica (full or Junior set) was once considered the last word in reference material. For some of us, it was the first or only resource we used. At the library. Teachers accepted its citations without question. I'm sure plagiarism was rampant then, too. Now students are taught to use the Internet. Thanks to projects digitizing the contents of great libraries and journals making issues available online, soon electronic research will be king. For some, it is already, with their first and last stop the Wikipedia. It was probably the first attempt to offer knowledge on the web, but unfortunately many users don't realize it is a very volunteer effort and quite vulnerable to manipulation. Even the managers have had to publish a disclaimer, but I wonder how many people even see it or read it. The general disclaimer takes pains to point out twice, "Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here" before the ubiquitous C.Y.A. statements.

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Store Research Information

It sometimes seems that the newest generation of writers knows how to research topics only with an Internet connection. Some think the Wikipedia is an authority to cite. If you're working on something important and for public consumption (eventually), you need to return to the information's roots. That means finding its source in print if you can. For academic research, often the original source is the only acceptable version to cite. You might not have an actual copy of it, but your digital one should contain all the sourcing information (title, authors, date published, location, page numbers, editors and perhaps in what other publication).

In all your other researching, copy to disk or print out versions of the pages you might use. My rule of thumb in journalism was to have about ten times as many facts as made it into the story. You want the data safe in case you can't find it again (you did remember to capture the pages' URLs, too, didn't you? They aren't always obvious, nor do they always appear in the data.) Pages often "disappear" for a variety of reasons. Last week I tried to write about a well-known British author's views on critics, only to find the Guardian Unlimited had removed both parts of her article in a spat over copyright ... and I haven't found a free archived image yet!

You also want to be able to verify the accuracy as well as the existence and credibility of your sources for others. When printing out pages, set the page layout software to display the date, name of the site and the URL. Be certain you have the same information for any data saved on disk Even if you've emailed it to yourself, send yourself another message with the referring documentation.

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