You’re writing your first novel, and you know you must shoot for around 80 to 95 thousand words. Once you know what your book will be about, it’s time to start planning the structure of the story. What will happen in each chapter, and how much has to happen before you move on to the …
No, we’re not talking about “homework,” “responsibility” or anything else that implies you’ll have to make an enormous effort when you’d rather be doing something else. Instead, we’re talking about words that give you a feeling of real disgust. They’re perfectly ordinary, otherwise-innocuous-seeming words, but researchers have found when study participants are asked to rate …
Love has been described as “A Many Splendored Thing” in poems (William Waterway), in films (1955), and in Academy Award winning songs (lyrics Paul Francis Webster). The same descriptive phrase has been used for a TV soap opera. “A Many Splendored Thing” originated in a poem by late 19th century poet, Francis Thompson. He was …
There seems to be a day for just about everything. I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised if I came across National Let’s Eat Takeout Day, and I’d probably support it if it existed. Earth Day is real enough, but why only one day? Shouldn’t we make every day Earth Day? Maybe we wouldn’t …
This seemingly idle question may not be all that simple to answer. One thing is sure, 1,000 words all written without any paragraph spacing will drive your reader a little mad. The first point is clear: 1,000 words is a lot of words. Split it up into paragraphs for heaven’s sake, or expect your intended …
Symbolism is all around us, and although some symbols are universal, some concepts have symbolic significance that are purely individual. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, words are made up of symbols (the alphabet), but words also have a deep symbolic significance in themselves. Even your name is symbol that represents your identity! Words can be …
Although there are many opinions on how many types of essays there are, everyone seems to agree on what you need to formulate a good paragraph. You’ll probably have read that a sentence expresses a single idea. A paragraph is a group of sentences dealing with a similar idea. As soon as you move on …
To succeed at school, you need to be able to write different types of essays. Your teachers will seldom tell you exactly which type of essay you should be writing, so you need to be able to figure it out from the question you have been asked. Once you’ve identified the right type of essay …
Are you writing a song? Would you like it to be really catchy? Why not go with what works for everyone, and use the most popular words found in hit songs? If you’re wondering whether there actually are words that songwriters continually resort to, it won’t take you long to hit on the word “love.” …
When we try to decide which language is the hardest to learn, we have a problem. Everything, but everything, is subjective. There are a lot of factors that contribute to language learning difficulties. Broadly, we could sum these up as: The language(s) you grew up speaking Your attitude Your personal context If you grew up …
