FaithWriters.com-Christian Writers Forum

I agree with Jan about the reading level--I virtually never pay attention to it. I do pay a lot of attention to the number of words per sentence. The average numbers that I mentioned, I've seen for LOTS of types of writing. However, never for children's book or for passages with lots of dialog.

Question: is there a way to get straight to the readability statistics? It seems like I have to go through the entire spell check process before the score chart pops up, and that could become tedious for a long document. Theresa Unfortunately, not that I am aware of. Someone else here may know. Als...

Different approaches work for different writers, and for me, I believe I would go bananas if I made myself count the number of words in a sentence, and/or the number of sentences in each paragraph. I agree that counting all this would be a pain, especially in a long piece. But I do think—especially...

Jan, I LOVE your analogy of the bell curves for sentences and paragraphs. Most writing handbooks recommend an average sentence length, although the recommendations are not uniform. I remember seeing 18, 23, and 25; and I used 23 with my students. For writing that is short enough, I recommend (and pr...

In fiction, there is an editors’ battle over the past perfect tense: some complain that authors do not use it when they should; others complain that authors overuse it. I will often use the contraction to reduce the FEEL (at least to me) of the number of past perfects: “he’d played,” “she’d thought,...

Here are a few thoughts. Re: “I” in academic writing. This rule (at least for some disciplines) is relaxing. I very frequently use “I” in my academic writing (probably about 60% of the time). I have never had any of my uses removed by an editor. I think people are finally waking up to two things: 1)...

Here's a link for a TED talk by Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield. Even though this is a talk, not a written piece, I thought it was interested how much of the talk is in second person, present tense (but with notable inconsistencies). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zo62S0ulqhA By the way, if you'v...

Interesting. Thanks.

That's a great report. I am definitely against the editions that have replaced the n-word with the word "slave," but I thought it might be very uncomfortable to read it out loud. Again, great report. What was the racial composition of the classes? (I hope this is not a thread hi-jack, give...

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was another one that I loved reading aloud to my students. So much fun! That must have been interesting with 200-some occurrences of the n-word. (Sorry for dinging you on the King James English.) But you were right, and I was wrong. Another lesson in "trust y...

Dialect is very hard! I don’t think I’ve ever written in it, but here are a few thoughts triggered by the lesson and others’ comments. 1. I have written in “King James English” once (in this piece ) and had an interesting experience. I made sure all the pronouns and verb endings were correct. It’s r...

Always lurking; not always participating!

Jan, you're right, of courses, that it is often OK to follow "this" with “is.” But I think what the students are being warned against—in a VERY poor manner—is something that ALL writers should avoid: broad pronoun reference. But that problem extends beyond the word “this” and often must be...

I was recently told about a rhetorical device called asyndeton where conjunctions are intentionally left out. I find asyndeton and its opposite, polysyndeton, amazingly powerful. I used to teach these techniques to my legal writing students, but without using the technical terms. Here's an example:...

I love when an ending comes full circle in a surprising way - bringing us back to the beginning I love this, too. Garrison Keillor does this in the stories he tells on his show (which I have listened to a lot) and I presume in his books (which I have not read). Or at least he takes one back to some...