by Jamie Chavez | Jan 24, 2013 | Words & Language
It’s not very often I’m stumped by which word to use—and frankly I love it when I am—but I came across a sentence in a manuscript the other day and had a little lexicological tizzy. Here’s what I read. It was a story about an old man telling the events of his life. He...
by Jamie Chavez | Jun 18, 2012 | Words & Language
There are words and then there are … favorite words. Like, you know, cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudels, these are a few of my favorite— You have favorite words, don’t you? I do. Again, I don’t mean favorite phrases, like Awesome, dude. (Although I do love...
by Jamie Chavez | May 31, 2012 | The Writing Craft, Words & Language
Teachers—and editors—get out the red pen when we see the same word used several times in the same paragraph (even somewhere on the same page). Most writers don’t realize they’re doing it—they’re just trying to get the words down. But after you’ve gotten the words down...
by Jamie Chavez | Jan 23, 2012 | Words & Language
Here’s a word that gets misused a lot, at least in the manuscripts I’ve seen in recent years. Smirk. It can be a noun or a verb. But no matter how it gets used, I think some writers are missing the fine nuances in smirk, the subtleties that distinguish it from, say,...
by Jamie Chavez | Jul 15, 2010 | Words & Language
Newsweek recently had an article about the aging brain. Some of the news is as bad as you might imagine: reasoning ability peaks at about age twenty-eight (only 6 percent of top scorers are in their fifties, and only 4 percent are in their sixties). Now, I tell people...
