Submissions for The Masters Review New Voices category are free, and open year round. A paid market. Check it out.
Froyo–frozen yogurt–is now officially a word. The Merriam-Webster.com dictionary has gotten bigger, this time by over 250 new words and definitions.
Anne R. Allen’s post on writing under pseudonyms in the digital age. Find out if/when it’s a good idea.
‘”Very” is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen.”
–Florence King
“But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.”
— Ernest Hemingway, “A Moveable Feast”
The Japanese language does not include swear words.
‘Perhaps profanity’s ascendancy will eventually bore people into finding new and more interesting ways to express themselves. For now, however, anyone hoping to escape the triumph of what was once called “gutter talk” should either lance hie eardrums or consider relocating to Japan.’
— “Salty Oaths and Bloody Words” by Dave Shiflett, WSJ, Books, Sat/Sun, Sept 17–18, 2016
“Want to guess what percentage of the CEOs I spoke with talked in
plain, everyday English?
One hundred percent. Every one of them. Without exception.
So you know how many used high falutin talk or more refined
prose: zero percent.
The lesson: The idea that when you are writing to C-level or
other senior executives you have to use “professional,” formal,
or stuffy language — and not plain talk — has no basis in fact,
at least as proven out by my research with its admittedly small
sampling. …
To assume that CEOs are a different species speaking a different
language is in most cases largely an error.”
— Bob Bly
Salvete omnes! (Hello, everyone!)
A fun article on Latin’s comeback.
“Cantemus!” (“Let’s sing!”)
The Wall Street Journal, Review, Sat./Sun., June 25–26, 2016
“…a very expressive word, which, as I have nothing better to tell you, I shall endeavor to explain to you: you will understand it better by the derivation than the definition.”
— Horace Walpole explaining the word he coined; from his letter to Horace Mann written on January 28, 1754
“Once we learn that a field is ‘an ancient noun connoting human effort,’ every time we encounter the word we can ask ourselves what the effort involved is–thus a coalfield becomes about the miners’ sweat, not the coal.”
Tristan Gooley on What Is Landscape? by John R. Stilgoe
The Wall Street Journal, Sat/Sun, Dec. 12–13, 2015, BOOKS OF THE YEAR
sasha a. palmer 