Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Writing
As Black History Month comes to a close, we are proud to feature a fantastic new reference book: Bartlett's Familiar Black Quotations. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. states in the foreword, it is an "impressively researched and documented collection of the finest thought produced by writers throughout the African diaspora." Here we present an excerpt from the preface by the book's editor, Retha Powers.
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Today is the federal observation of George Washington's birthday, also called Presidents' Day. Five years ago, an unfortunate typo was discovered in a quotation from Washington chiseled on the front of the New York State Supreme Courthouse. That typo still lingers today.
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Blog Excerpts
NaNoWriMo Has Begun!
It's time once again for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). As the website explains, it's "for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved." Visit the NaNoWriMo website to learn more.
As a teacher, writer and editor, I spend a significant portion of my life reminding others (and myself) that certain pairs of words are not interchangeable, although they might seem to be. Now isn't the same as know, and affect can't pinch-hit for effect. Lose vs. loose is a particular frustration as of late. However, in all of my many years of teaching and writing, no one has ever asked me whether they ought to use O or oh, and this makes me sad.
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Blog Excerpts
Flash, Gleam, Glint, Sparkle: McPhee, Woolf, and Words
On the heroic search for the right word
In an essay on writing in last week's The New Yorker, John McPhee describes drawing boxes around "perfectly O.K." words in a search for the "mot juste." Meanwhile, Virginia Woolf tells us words are a messy tangle that will always elude our best efforts to tie them down.
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Having logged many years teaching English and theatre at New York City high schools, Shannon Reed now teaches freshman English Composition at the University of Pittsburgh. Here Shannon shows how teachers can work with students to improve their writing by focusing on five overused words.
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Tasty MorselsGood stuff from Vocabulary.com
List of the Week: "Love Letter Words for Valentine's Day"
List of the Week: "Love Letter Words for Valentine's Day"
Become your own Bergerac with "Love Letter Words for Valentine's Day," a Vocabulary List of synonyms for "beautiful," "love," "desire," "need," and "heart."
(This list was created using the Vocabulary.com Dictionary's Advanced Search synonym finder. Learn more about Advanced Search with this short how-to video here.)
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