Writing is not like Speech
Writing and speech are too often compared, mistaken for each other even. We consider too often their apparent similarities. Too many of my students claim to write as they speak, […]
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A Few Ways to Teach Revision
Revision hardly seems controversial. Most of the time, most of us assume it is something all writers do, or should do. It also seems to be such a drag to […]
Revision as Not Just the Same Old Song: Another Parallel to Music
This might seem like a shameless plug for my Pretexts book. But it has occurred to me over the last week of talking with my first-year students about the parallels […]
On the Lost Art of Public Whistling
A few years before he passed away, my father sent us a clipping of a New York Times editorial on the vanished art of public whistling. I say “sent us” […]
Bring Back Recreational Reading
By the end of my senior year of high school in 1974, I had read Pierre Boulle’s Planet of the Apes three times, Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Oddyssy, […]