The country’s major newspapers have been writing about commas recently. Have the dog days of summer arrived early? University of Delaware Professor Ben Yagoda started the comma-tion in his New York Times Opinionator. If you count the most recently posted comma questions installment, in which the professor answers a lot of questions from readers about […]

Lately, we have encountered a memoir or two that are long, explanations of someone’s life. How interesting are explanations? Think of your mother explaining to you why you should get a life. Think of the person you are meeting for lunch explaining in detail why he or she is late. And think about somebody telling […]

A report in the Washington Post this morning details the soul searching National Public Radio is doing over contributor David Sedaris. Sedaris is a well-known memoirist and comic whose quirky stories about his upbringing and later life have also been best-selling books. The issue NPR is having is that it is a news organization and […]

It will not come as news to any of you that writing is a really hard endeavor.  Just about everybody agrees with that. In THE CAMBRIDGE HANDBOOK OF EXPERTISE AND EXPERT PERFORMANCE (a book that examines the scientific understanding of expertise in fifteen areas of endeavor), author Ronald Kellogg writes that serious writing requires the […]