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11 Compound Word Errors that Might Make You Look like a Numbskull

You might wonder why we flip out over stress the importance of accurate grammar and usage. Well, there are a couple of reasons … You look silly or unprofessional when you don’t get it right. Don’t think the proofreading police aren’t watching. They are. And they never sleep.

Great writers not only struggle with their [...]

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Amazon Staff Meetings: “No Powerpoint”

I am not a big fan of traditional slide-show lectures. This is in part because I am not a visual learner, but also because, as a writing teacher, I can see how easily a slide show can fill time without actually informing, persuading, challenging or moving the audience. Students who create slides that summarize what [...]

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The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens: Scientific American

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As digital texts and technologies become more prevalent, we gain new and more mobile ways of reading—but are we still reading as attentively and thoroughly? How do our brains respond differently to onscreen text than to words on paper? Should we be worried about dividing our attention between pixels and ink or is the validity [...]

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New Test for Computers – Grading Essays at College Level

Imagine writing an essay for a college, and, instead of sparking personal feedback from an expert who spends five or ten minutes per page writing personalized reactions and tips for improvement, your work was never actually read by a human being who could recognize, appreciate, and encourage your accomplishments. Imagine that your essay was instead [...]

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Why scientists should care about art

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My artsy daughter loves stories about science far more than she loves science; she has won “Best Display” for her age group in a science fair. When my son was 5, when given the choice he would invariably ask me to read him a nonfiction book rather an a fiction book; he has won “Most [...]

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Real college classes have writing assignments and required reading.

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While I can imagine teaching a course that intersects with the interests of a wide, non academic audience, a series of free, optional online public lectures would be great public service, but not great teaching.

I’m sorry if this bursts anyone’s bubble, but watching videos on the Internet and maybe writing a few very short [...]

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A warning to college profs from a high school teacher

My students did well on those questions because we practiced bad writing. My teaching was not evaluated on the basis of how well my students did, but I felt I had a responsibility to prepare them for the examination in a way that could result in their obtaining college credit.

I would like to believe [...]

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The “Bogosity Generator” Tool In Science Fiction

A wonderful analysis of an important part of world-building in science fiction.

As most of you probably know, filmmakers use the term “MacGuffin” to stand for some object that various characters in the tale are competing for. A secret paper, a formula, a stunning gem, a statue of a Maltese falcon…

In Fantasy and SF [...]

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My View: What will you do with an English degree? Plenty

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I just found my first reading assignment for the “Intro to Literary Study” class I’ll be teaching in a week.

Almost every college student who considers majoring in English – or French, or philosophy, or art history – inevitably hears the question: “What in the world are you going to do with that?” The question [...]

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Worried about the future of books? Here’s what you can do.

It’s a lot easier to be selfish, to be an artistic libertarian who decides “I will just concern myself with making my work and I’ll just hope and pray there’s still some kind of an apparatus in place to edit, design, produce, market, distribute and sell it when it’s done, or else imagine that I’ll [...]