Category: writing
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The Transformative Power of a Narrative
Can a narrative attached to an everyday object increase its objective value? That was the question posed by Rob Walker (author of The New York Times‘ Consumed column) and Joshua Glenn (author of Taking Things Seriously) when they started the Significant Objects Project—an experiment designed to test whether a series of stories created about an object…
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Ways of Reading, Writing, Learning
A Working Library’s Ways of Reading could be called the nine rules of reading, writing, and learning. My favourite three: Always read with a pen in hand. The pen should be used both to mark the text you want to remember and to write from where the text leaves you. Think of the text as the…
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Writing Tips for Non-Writers
Multiple Hugo Award-winner and Stargate Universe creative consultant John Scalzi offers ten writing tips for non-professional writers: Speak what you write. Punctuate, damn you. With sentences, shorter is better than longer. Learn to friggin’ spell. Don’t use words you don’t really know. Grammar matters, but not as much as anal grammar Nazis think it does. Front-load your point. Try…
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Grammar Precisionists, Rejoice!
Jason points to a 10-question grammar challenge given to the students of a non-fiction workshop held by David Foster Wallace. It’s not a particularly easy challenge, made worse by the fact that my non-native English speaking girlfriend just beat my score comprehensively (this wasn’t a difficult feat, however). The answers are provided, and I particularly…
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Blogs Designed Like Magazines
With the blogs of Dustin Curtis, Gregory Wood and Jason Santa Maria as examples (each worthy of your time, by the way), Smashing Magazine looks at blogs designed like magazines,* discussing what these ‘blogazines’ mean for the future of boring blog posts. Dustin Curtis had this to say on the drawbacks of designing like this on…
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The End of the Inverted Pyramid
The inverted pyramid style of reportage is broken, believes Jason Fry, and it is time to reinvent contextless reporting into a more reader-friendly style. Fry points to an essential Nieman Reports essay that suggests how context-central reporting could be the future of reporting and a reason why Wikipedia is becoming the destination of choice for those…
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Gladwell on Education, Hiring, Journalism
I haven’t read (m)any of Malcolm Gladwell‘s articles in the past 6 months as they’re all, well, a bit homogeneous. Plus, if there are any fascinating revelations that I really should hear about I’ll undoubtedly discover them (in a much-condensed form) in many other places rehashing his content. This interview with Malcolm Gladwell—where he discusses…
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Social Writing
No, I don’t mean blogs. “Protagonize was originally devised as a lark, testing out a new technology platform with what was supposed to be a simple, fun idea. When the site launched in late 2007, it was dedicated completely to the (nearly) lost art of the addventure (yes, that’s spelled right), a very specific type of…
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“We have broken your business, now we want your machines.”
Russell Davies on what’s been percolating in digital culture regarding print media: It’s not news that the internet has stimulated all sorts of creativity in the real world. From communities and marketplaces of crafters like folksy to new forms of personal manufacture like shapeways; technology is giving regular people access to tools and markets that once they…