Graham Greene called them beastly. Theodore Roethke said that, in order to write well, you had to hate them. Stephen King wrote that the road to Hell was paved with them. I'm talking, of course, about adverbs. While some English guidebooks and well-meaning authors warn writers away from … [Read more...]
The Language of Rejection
The daily news is so chock full of arguments, accusations, and harsh criticisms nowadays that I am wary of reading it. Sometimes the ire is backed up with well-reasoned arguments and loads of data, and other times it’s fueled by frustration, rage, or a firm faith in a factitious "way things are … [Read more...]
Fictions and Factions
Do you know the difference between a fictitious statement, a factitious statement, and a factious statement? These are just three of a cluster of seven adjectives with overlapping definitions that help us separate fact from fiction from faction. Just the Facts Factional is the adjective form of … [Read more...]