On a science fiction writers' forum, one writer recommended the website www.Grammarly.com ( Read more... )

The New York Times in praise of a book consisting of a single, unfinished sentence -- 117 pages long.Thirty-three pages into what appears to be an unbroken highway of text, the reader might well wonder if that’s a mission statement or an invitation. “Dancing Lessons” unfurls as a single, sometimes maddening sentence that ends after 117 pages ( Read more... )

On another forum, a friend wrote to complain about writers who start long parenthetical comments, particularly when they forget to finish them. I agreed and replied ( Read more... )

I actually don't know the answer to that question -- or at least, an answer that can be backed up with citations. But that question (along with the origin and history of "OK") is the subject of the book OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word.

Here's a Q & A on O & K. An excerpt:
Q. Why write a whole book about OK? I mean, it’s just…OK ( Read more... )

He's the writer -- one of hundreds or thousands -- who is actually writing the papers for some students. He's been doing it for about a decade, and he's ready to retire, he says.Of all of the research papers, doctoral theses, essays, and various other writings "Ed Dante" has done for cheating students, it intrigues me most that many of those ( Read more... )

This is an excellent resource for words frequently misused or misspelled.

At the bottom of the list are links to various other useful sites. One of them is a critique -- fairly acidic -- of the famous "Strunk & White's Elements of Style" by Geoffrey K. Pullum writing at the Chronicle of Higher Education. His critique is titled "50 Years of ( Read more... )

This device, the "Espresso Book Machine," will make it possible to select a text from a list -- potentially even your own unpublished PDF -- and walk out with a printed, bound book. Relatively cheaply, it says:

===|==============/ Level Head

I was just talking with my aunt -- she's in her nineties and reading my Age of Octans story -- about the use of profanity in modern writing, especially science fiction. It is, indeed, quite common, and there seems to be an arms race to determine what new story can shock readers the most. The defense seems to be not to be shocked, or even bothered ( Read more... )

I'm helping a friend who's working on a science fiction novel, and the question has come up about how much meteor dust accumulates on the Earth. (The question is really focusing on the Moon: The Apollo seismometers were picking up something like 150 individually detectable impacts per year (plus the quakes), and below this was a constant noise ( Read more... )

Or, rather putting an emotional face on one.

A good friend who has read my work and knows a few people in the entertainment business has suggested that I write a treatment (a short version of a screenplay) for Age of Octans. This was before the release and tremendous success of Avatar. Clearly computer animation is up to large challenges. But I ( Read more... )