My blog post today is a fascinating essay by Isaiah about writing, rhetoric, and Winston Churchill, which was published in the Atlantic in 1949. I find it a rich think piece that works, I think successfully, to rescue Churchill from his critics. Here's a link to the original. He starts with a vicious attack on … Continue reading Isaiah Berlin on Writing, Rhetoric, and Churchill
This post is an essay by Len Gutkin that was recently published in the Chronicle Review. Here's a link to the original. The essay does a great job of capturing the essence of a new form of discourse on American university campuses he calls the "hyperbolic style" -- which he characterizes as "breathless, declaratory, at … Continue reading Len Gutkin — The Hyperbolic Style in American Academe
This post is a nice essay by Rosemarie Ostler about how American English evolved in the new world. It draws on her book, The United States of English, and first appeared in Lapham's Quarterly. Here's a link to the original. She shows how the American version of the language emerged from a variety of sources. Some … Continue reading Rosemarie Ostler: The Early Days of American English
This post is a recent essay by John McWhorter from the Times. In it he explores an issue dear to my heart -- that dynamic writing is about action. It's the verbs not the nouns that matter most. Academic writing is dense with nouns and also with verbs that are turned into nouns (e.g., optimization, … Continue reading John McWhorter — Forget Nouns. Verbs Are Where the Action Is
This post is a recent piece by Michael Massing from the New York Times. Here's a link to the original. The piece consists entirely of a remarkably inclusive list of common cliche's used by writers in English. An impressive display, I think you'll agree. As all writers know, it's hard to avoid using cliches. A cliche … Continue reading Michael Massing: Avoid These Cliches Like the Plague
This post is an essay by George Packer from the April issue of Atlantic. Here's a link to the original. I find a thoughtful rumination on the problems posed by shifting to equity language in an effort to reduce discrimination and disparagement. The problem, he says, is that the effort tends to lead to euphemisms, which … Continue reading George Packer: The Moral Case Against Equity Language
This blog post is an essay from Atlantic by Walter Mimms about the peculiar evolution of the word "please" in English usage. Somehow it evolved from the super-polite "if it please you" to the slightly less formal "if you please" to the polite but simple "please" to the peremptory "would you please move" to the … Continue reading Walter Mimms — How “Please” Stopped Being Polite
This post is an essay by David Bentley Hart about How to Write English Prose, which was published online at The Lamp. Here's a link to the original. What I like most about it is that it's so thoroughly overwrought. In many ways, it's a diatribe against Elements of Style and Orwell's essay on writing, both … Continue reading David Bentley Hart — How to Write English Prose
This post is a piece by John McWhorter about the peculiar way in which the meaning and usage of words changes over time, which was published in the Times. Here's a link to the original. The central point is this: The fit between words and meanings is much fuzzier and unstable than we are led to … Continue reading John McWhorter — The Secret Lives of Words
This post is a fun piece by Sarah Brownsberger about the dysfunction of recent shifts in the American English. Here's a link to the original, which was published in Hedgehog. She identifies nefarious trends in the transformation of the language. One is the loss of agency, as stuff seems to happen without people making it … Continue reading Sarah Brownsberger — Stop the Term-Creation Meaning-Kidnap!
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 