Legal Writing

Use Theme to Lift Readers to a Higher View of the Story

Posted on November 18, 2009
Two days a week, about 50 steps from my desk, sits another writer in another office finishing up another book. His name is Tom French. We met years and years ago at a Bruce Springsteen concert, and we have been writing pals ever since. We share the same agent and a long friendship, but it is a coincidence that has us writing our books at the same time in the same place...

Step Into the Mystery of Practical English with the Glamour of Grammar

Posted on November 18, 2009
Since my book "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer" was conceived on this Web site, I would like to bring you up to date on what has happened to the book since its publication three years ago. I also have some news on how you can get your hands on these writing strategies both old and new...

Playing, Singing and Writing: Life Lessons from Les, Shirley and Gene

Posted on September 17, 2009
As a young man, I imagined that the last quarter of my life would be taken up with a little travel, good eating, walking my dog along the seashore and taking my grandkids to the ballpark. But now, at 61, things look a little different. After 30 years at The Poynter Institute, when I peer down that road yonder, I see many more years of productive work -- with a little golf thrown in...

From Telegraph to Twitter: The Language of the Short Form

Posted on September 04, 2009
I guess you could say that I'm a late adopter. I have no Facebook account. I remain skeptical of PowerPoint presentations. My favorite technology is still the book, although my new iPhone is catching up fast. I admit it: I still write the occasional essay in longhand...

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Before the Gates Arrest: Race and the Case for Common Courtesy

Posted on July 30, 2009
The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and its aftermath brought to mind a newspaper column written on Sept. 30, 1960, by Gene Patterson, then editor of The Atlanta Constitution. The column gave an account of a traffic accident in a small Georgia town, but, as with most great essays, it turned out to be about something far deeper, and more enduring...

Lesson of the 'Mexican Flu': Beware Language Prejudices

Posted on April 29, 2009
I heard a report on NPR this morning about an Israeli leader who suggested that people not refer to the new strain of influenza as the Swine Flu. His comment came in deference to Orthodox Jews, those who would not want anyone to think -- should they become infected -- that they had somehow violated the strictest Jewish health and dietary laws...

Sports Journalists Score With Multiplatform Reinvention

Posted on March 20, 2009
RELATEDWhen sports journalists gather in St. Petersburg on April 22-24, the talk will be about re-invention: how to survive, revive, and thrive during these tumultuous times. The champions of re-invention across media platforms turn out to be sports journalists of the old school...

25 Non-Random Things About Writing Short

Posted on February 10, 2009
RELATED 25 Random Things About 25 Random Things on FacebookStart with a viral Internet craze. Throw in bits and pieces of confession and voyeurism, raw honesty and self-serving puffery. Add a dash of random beauty and musings on our digital identities...

How to Cover the Super Bowl and Why

Posted on January 25, 2009
RELATEDJoin a live chat about Super Bowl coverage on Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 2 p.m. EST with Roy Peter Clark and Dave Kindred, Buddy Martin, Jemele Hill. Scroll to the chat window below and set a reminder for Jan. 27 at 2 p.m. then come back and join the conversation...

Obama's Inauguration Speech Relies on the Rhetoric of Responsibility

Posted on January 21, 2009
I heard commentators on NPR argue that the inauguration rhetoric of President Barack Obama did not "soar." I agree with that criticism, which is why it is unlikely that a single phrase will be quoted by our grandchildren. But political rhetoric should be judged not just on its inspirational eloquence, but also on its ability to move an audience, not just to tears, but to action...

The Lure and Peril of 'Missing White Girl' Syndrome

Posted on November 18, 2008
As I write this, a news bulletin from CNN alerts me that there may be a break in the Caylee Anthony case. Divers in Orlando, announces the anchor, have found a plastic bag at the bottom of a river. The bag is said to be weighted down with bricks and to contain children's toys and possibly bones...

How Lines of Language Moved Lines of Voters

Posted on November 06, 2008
RELATED View slideshows of 11 national sites, 31 TV stations and 79 local papers, featuring coverage of Obama's victory. Submit a screengrab.More election-related resources:Interactive Forms Give Power to Election PerspectivesVideo Complements Election CoverageTop Priorities of an Obama AdministrationPage One Today / Obama's Historic VictoryHighlighting Diverse Angles in the ElectionsDon't Drop Religion Angle After Votes Are CountedVisualizing Data on Election DayFiveThirtyEight Combines Polls, Reporting, Baseball It was not the war, or the economy, or George Bush that got Barack Obama elected...

Subjunctivitis: What Happens When your Verbs Get Blurry?

Posted on October 27, 2008
I begin this lesson on a difficult grammatical concept called the "subjunctive mood" with a memory of one of the first pornographic films I ever saw. It was called "The Secret Lives of Romeo and Juliet," and by contemporary standards would barely raise even a highbrow eyebrow...

From Pepys to Your Peeps, Finding Your Voice as a Blogger

Posted on October 20, 2008
What is a blog? Am I a blogger? Should a blog change the way I think and write?During the first week in December, I am leading a seminar at Poynter titled "From Report to Column to Blog." I'll have the help of such brainiacs as Matt Thompson, Jay Rosen and Josh Benton, along with a team of Poynterites...

Journalists Should Follow President Bush's Example

Posted on October 15, 2008
I listened carefully to a full nine-minute address to the nation by President George W. Bush on Oct. 10, and have now read and studied the complete text. In spite of the president's reputation as a clumsy speaker, I found the remarks a model of civic clarity...

Covering Economic Crisis: Wall Street vs. Main Street

Posted on October 13, 2008
There appears to be one thing that presidential candidates and journalists can agree upon: that "Main Street vs. Wall Street" is the political and cultural slogan of the day.Democrats and Republicans can use it for their own ideological purposes, Republicans to demonize liberal elitism and Democrats to inflame class prejudices...

The Well-Crafted Sentence

Posted on October 09, 2008
Letters represent sounds. Words are built from letters. A group of words makes a phrase. Add a subject and verb, and you have a clause. If that clause expresses a complete thought, we call it a sentence. But if that clause expresses an incomplete thought, it is called subordinate or dependent, and we have to attach it to a main clause, or it will not be considered Standard English...

About to Bail

Posted on October 01, 2008
I heard a member of Congress complain that headline writers were partly responsible for the failure of recent economic legislation by referring to it as a "bail out" plan. He argued that it should be called a "work out" plan. Another insisted on calling it a "rescue" plan...

America and Wall Street's Gambling Addiction

Posted on September 30, 2008
Gambling is seductive. I learned that lesson the first time my wife and I visited Foxwoods Resort Casino, one of the world's largest, in a cozy wooded town in southern Connecticut. We were playing the quarter slot machines, and Karen won about $25, which came pouring out in that delicious silver cascade of coins...

What Would David Foster Wallace Write About John McCain Now?

Posted on September 26, 2008
I'm not one of those writers who believe much in the "tortured artist" syndrome. My guess is that depression is as serious a problem for truck drivers as for authors. The culture would be more literate if we helped people escape the notion that good writing requires a dark night of the soul or some agony in the garden...

NOLA Story Demonstrates that Nothing is Ineluctable

Posted on September 23, 2008
The word "ineluctable," meaning "not to be avoided or escaped; inevitable," appears on page 896 of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) along with 55 other words, most of them adjectives. The adjective, we should all have learned in grammar school, adds to the meaning of a noun, a job that could be fulfilled by each of these words:  ineffable, ineffectual, inefficient, inelastic, inelegant, ineligible, ineloquent, inert, inessential, inevitable, inexact, inexcusable, inexorable, inexpedient, inexpensive, inexpert, inexpressive, and my new all-time favorite: inexpugnable, meaning "impossible to overthrow by force...

When a Verb is a Noun

Posted on September 18, 2008
Good morning, students.Today's lesson is on the parts of speech. Can anyone name them? Wally? No, not the teeth, tongue and lips. They are body parts that help you speak, but they are not the parts of speech.Hermione? Very good, young lady...

How to Get Readers to "Go There"

Posted on September 15, 2008
I was born to write this lead: "My butt could save your life."That immortal phrase appeared at the top of my story in the St. Petersburg Times this week, a cautionary tale about my tail, so to speak, my colonoscopy, that is.I share this story for two reasons: to describe some important writing strategies; and, more crucial, to get you screened for colon and rectal cancer if you belong to one of the risk groups...

You Can Put Lipstick on a Bad Writer, but...

Posted on September 11, 2008
You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. And you can put a tired catch phrase in the mouth of a great orator, and it's still a tired catch phrase.Next thing you know, Sen. Barack Obama will be trying to turn chicken spit into chicken salad or lemons into lemonade...

Seven Missteps on the Road to Ambiguity

Posted on September 08, 2008
Poet and scholar William Empson was only 24 years old in 1930 when he wrote the book "Seven Types of Ambiguity," which is why I hate him, not for the influence of his scholarship, but that so wise a study of literature should come from a so young a writer...

Great Presidents are Great Communicators

Posted on September 05, 2008
I have been thinking a lot in this election season of a remark I heard Norman Mailer make at the Nieman Narrative Conference in the months before his death. He said, in essence, that a leader, especially a president, should be judged by his use and abuse of language...

Here's Your Handy-Dandy Propaganda Detector

Posted on September 02, 2008
Journalists love slogans about journalism, and one of their favorites is Hemingway's insistence that writers need to "develop a built-in bullshit detector." The tools of skepticism are at the center of the reporter's craft. To be used in the public interest, these tools must be dusted off and sharpened, especially in this season of overheated political advertising, spectacle and oratory...

Political Rhetoric as Predictable as an Episode of 'Law & Order'

Posted on August 28, 2008
Political oratory in America has become as predictable as an episode of "Law & Order."If you are a fan of "Law & Order" - the original series - then you know there is a reliable and predictable structure to the narrative:*The story opens with two or three random characters whose only job is to find a dead body...

What Happens to a Verb Deferred?

Posted on August 25, 2008
Even more than pubs, old movie houses, and ancient ballparks, I love bookstores. For me, a bookstore is like sex or pizza: even when it's bad it's good. My kind of bookstore has book carts in front of the store, open to the elements, crammed with tattered and water-stained detritus, the ruined remains of remainders...

Pointing the Way

Posted on August 21, 2008
Sometimes when I read, the words will begin to glow on the page, like a scene from Harry Potter, always a signal to me that I should begin to read more carefully. This second, closer reading will often reveal some clever or useful effect, the result of the strategic application of a writing or language tool...

Branching Out Can Leave Verbs Out on a Limb

Posted on August 14, 2008
Over millennia of language use and study, one powerful message survives: The creation of meaning - expression of a complete thought -- requires a subject and a verb, the king and queen of comprehensibility. And the king and queen are most powerful when they sit on thrones beside each other rather than in separate castles far away...

Splice and Dice

Posted on August 12, 2008
You would think that one way to learn about the technical aspects of language is to read masterful writers, especially contemporary authors whose work is honored by critics and prize juries. So you should head for the archives of the Pulitzer Prizes or the National Book Awards, right? Not so fast...

Dialect Lessons from the Masters

Posted on August 06, 2008
RELATED The Problem of DialectEach of us speaks -- and sometimes writes -- in a dialect, which means to me, a non-standard form of English defined or influenced by national origin, region, ethnicity, or social class. Learn more about how to use dialects in your writing...

The Moral of the Story

Posted on August 06, 2008
RELATED   In an interview with Poynter, St. Pete Times reporter Lane DeGregory and photojournalist Melissa Lyttle describe their work on "The Girl in the Window." Here are the highlights:   Story Idea | Building Relationships | Collaboration | Photography | Reporting | Writing | Online Presentation | Structure | Print Presentation | Emotional Consequences | Accountability | Theme It took about 45 minutes last Sunday to read "The Girl in the Window" in Poynter's St...

Let the Games Begin Without Me

Posted on August 03, 2008
RELATED Olympics Past and Present   Beijing Olympics & Net Censorship: Who's Calling the Shots?   Olympic Protests Solidify Government Support in China   Death Threats Won't Stop USATer from Covering Olympics Olympic Warm-up: China's Net Filtering Gets More Subtle   Covering the Beijing Olympics Won't Be Easy   2006 OLYMPICS COVERAGE   Olympic Athletes: Handle With Care   Olympic Photos: Picks from the Photo Editors   Lessons from Olympic Imagery   2004 OLYMPICS COVERAGE   Gold Medal Coverage Seeing the Games in Greece Through a Local Lens   Howard Berkes on Covering the Olympics for NPR   The Olympics Online in Poland   A Sampling of Gold-Medal Olympic Online CoverageThe Olympian Task of Finding Olympic TV Schedules The Interactive Summer OlympicsI love sports and sports journalism, but that does not make me a fan of the Olympic Games, which begin on August 8, 2008; Make that 8/8/8...

The Problem of Dialect

Posted on July 31, 2008
One of the trickiest and most tempting acts of writing is to render a person's styles of speech. My wife, who grew up in Rhode Island, may have once said to me, "I am going to need a new pattern for a corduroy jumper," but it probably sounded more like, "I'm gawna need a new patten for a cawdurhroy jumpuh...

Death to Serial (Comma) Killers

Posted on July 28, 2008
FROM THE EDITOR The Poynter Institute follows Associated Press Style and excludes what is called the "serial comma" or "Oxford comma," that is, a final comma in a series before and. But given the rebellious opinions of our author, we have waived that standard exclusion, so expect to find in this essay more commas than usual...

News Product Placement a Kroc

Posted on July 23, 2008
I'm receiving phone calls this week about a plan to use product placement during certain broadcast news programs. The product in question is a cup of coffee from McDonald's. In one version of the plan, McDonald's cups would be visible on news sets...

From Rim Editor to Ram the Editor

Posted on July 21, 2008
I'm feeling more than a bit xenophobic these days, and I'm blaming it on the movement to outsource newspaper copy editing services to India. I was interviewed on this topic recently for a public radio program in New York City called "The Takeaway" with John Hockenberry and Adaora Udoji...

Proof That Remnick Is Wrong

Posted on July 16, 2008
RELATED "Satire's New Home in Journalism," by Kelly McBride In a world awash in random irony and snarky cynicism, it is wise to consider the healing words of David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. Defending satire and his choice of cover art, Remnick told National Public Radio that he disagreed with those critics who thought that rank and file Americans would not get the humor in the cover...

Numb Nuts: Newspapers Are Stupid

Posted on July 15, 2008
I can't imagine what George Carlin is thinking today as he laughs down at us from heaven or up at us from heck. Oh, yeah, I used heck so as not to offend the readers of this Web site, especially the children who might stumble upon this post on their way to Romenesko...

Fragging Without Shame

Posted on July 10, 2008
I sit at this moment in my doctor's office staring at my cholesterol numbers, and they are not good. Too much pizza and Pepsi, I guess. I look up and notice two pieces of office art: a scale model of the human heart and the head of a giant alligator. The gator looks like he is about to eat the heart...

Good Semicolons Make Good Neighbors

Posted on July 09, 2008
My wife Karen worked with cancer patients for many years and taught me that an essential part of recovery is a good sense of humor. So when our great pastor, Father Robert Gibbons, announced to the congregation that he'd need surgery for colon cancer, I rushed up to him after Mass with this happy thought: "Father, by the time they're finished with you, you may be the only man in American who knows how to use a semicolon...

How I Wrote 'Father Tim' -- and Why

Posted on July 02, 2008
I hope you get a chance to read my essay "Father Tim: Irish Catholicism and American Journalism."  Unlike most of my work for this Web site, this essay is not about writing, reporting, editing or language. Instead, it is a reflection upon religion and culture, as expressed in the passing of an important figure in politics and journalism...

There's Parallel, and Then There's PARALLEL

Posted on June 20, 2008
When David Shribman was a young reporter, he attended a dinner to honor a famous Navy hero, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover. Present at the event were three American presidents: Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter and Richard M. Nixon, "a spectacle that Sen. Bob Dole would later immortalize as a gathering of 'Hear No Evil, See No Evil ...

Too Much Wind Beneath Our Wings?

Posted on June 13, 2008
I was the world's worst Boy Scout, a member of the Beaver Patrol (not kidding) in Troop 177 in suburban New York. I hated swimming, could barely tie my shoes, and my idea of roughing it was spending a night at a Holiday Inn. I am left with two dominant memories: a paralyzing attack of poison ivy and a family of Eagle Scouts whose favorite activity was leafing through their father's collection of girlie magazines...

Avoiding The Trap

Posted on June 13, 2008
My errors in grammar and usage are more embarrassing than yours. Like the preacher caught with the prostitute, like the dentist with bad teeth, like the insane psychiatrist, the language expert who stumbles risks becoming a laughingstock.My mistakes come from inattention, haste, or careless proofreading, but some come from ignorance...

Give Me an S. Give Me Another S. Whataya Got?

Posted on June 11, 2008
Language scholars have a word for the sound made by the letter s. They call it a sibilant, derived from the Latin word meaning "to hiss." Leave it to the scholars to call something a sibilant when they could have as easily called it a hissy, but then that might have been mistaken for a synonym we use in the South for tantrum...

The Thinking Writer's Emoticon

Posted on June 06, 2008
The first research I remember on the effects of word processing was produced by a New Jersey professor who contrasted the work of students using Apples vs. those using IBM personal computers. He concluded that while the Apple kids wrote cleaner looking stories, the PC kids produced the better writing...

I Cannot Tell a Lay

Posted on June 02, 2008
In his famous essay "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell asserts that he is not concerned about correct grammar and syntax, "so long as one makes one's meaning clear." But I cannot recall a single lapse in old George's language that would require the application of a hickory stick to his great anti-colonial bottom...

Why the Littlest Words Can Mean a Lot

Posted on May 28, 2008
RELATED There are occasions, of course, when an substitutes for a, a distinction influenced by sound. The path to getting this right is simple and governed by your dialect and your ear. If a word begins with a consonant sound, use a. A vowel sound requires an...

Give Us Your Toughest Spelling Words

Posted on May 23, 2008
When I came into journalism in 1977, I was commissioned by the American Society of Newspaper Editors to create a spelling test for reporters and editors. That idea seemed lame, I thought, until the day I stood next to a news editor who had misspelled the word "dilemma" in a huge headline...

A Little Practice, Not Magic, Will Turn You Into a Better Speller

Posted on May 21, 2008
This week I'm offering two essays on why good spelling matters, how it can mean the difference between love and lust, between laughter and loss. But first let me sit in wonder at the realization that, once again, we've made a connection between language and enchantment...

Hey Kids, Got a Grammar Problem? Let's Take a Vote!

Posted on May 16, 2008
I confess my intolerance for dichotomous thinking. When it comes to red state vs. blue state politics, I'm a little bit purple. When the phonics zealots wage war against the "whole language" hordes, I stand on the 50-yard line and shake my head. In a country vs rock debate, call me rockabilly...

Fifty Writing Tools: Quick List

Posted on May 16, 2008
Use this quick list of Writing Tools as a handy reference. Copy it and keep it in your wallet or journal, or near your desk or keyboard. Share it and add to it.I. Nuts and Bolts1. Begin sentences with subjects and verbs.Make meaning early, then let weaker elements branch to the right...

'Look it up in the OED!'

Posted on May 13, 2008
To live inside the English language, I need the help of my two favorite dictionaries: The Oxford English Dictionary (or OED) and the American Heritage Dictionary (or AHD). Webster-philes can express their own preferences in their own books. For me, these two lexicons offer the history of our language at my fingertips, with the OED showing me where English has been and the AHD where it's headed...

What the Big Bopper Taught Me About Grammar

Posted on May 08, 2008
In our common culture, grammar has taken on at least three sets of meanings and associations. It still refers to the etiquette of writing and reading, the conventions that allow us to create a standard written English, the technical term for which, according to critic John Simon, is "grapholect...

The Glamour of Grammar

Posted on May 06, 2008
Today I begin the online publication of a new unwritten book titled "The Glamour of Grammar." Depending on your point of view, "Glamour" will be a prequel or sequel to "Writing Tools" and will be blessed with the same publisher, Little, Brown. Many of you will remember that the essays that grew into the book "Writing Tools" first appeared on the Poynter Web site...

Poynter Honors Sportswriting Legend

Posted on May 01, 2008
Roy Peter Clark, Dan Jenkins, Buddy Martin On April 18, The Poynter Institute concluded its third Sports Journalism Summit by giving its version of a lifetime achievement award. You can say it was "no contest." The recipient was the legendary Dan Jenkins, a novelist who gave us "Semi-Tough," and a veteran columnist whose first love is college football, though his mistress is golf...

Voting Scandal Mars Motto Election!

Posted on April 29, 2008
RELATED "Cast Your Vote: Six-Word Journalism Mottos""Motto in Journalism: In Six Words" It appears that Florida has done it again: botched another election, that is, without benefit of early primaries or hanging chads...

Six-Word Journalism Mottos: The Top Entries

Posted on April 25, 2008
Thanks to the hundreds of you who submitted entries to our contest. Your assignment was to create a motto for contemporary journalism in six words. Some of these bits of wisdom, it must be said, were pretty lame. But many stood out as sharp, humorous, ironic, iconoclastic, idealistic or delightfully cynical...

Motto for Journalism -- in Six Words

Posted on April 21, 2008
I read a cool interview in the St. Pete Times with Stephen J. Dubner, co-author of the quirky classic "Freakonomics." Inspired by several analogies, Dubner and friends created a contest in which people submitted a new motto for the United States of America...

Why It Worked: A Rhetorical Analysis of Obama's Speech on Race

Posted on April 11, 2008
More than a century ago, scholar and journalist W.E.B. DuBois wrote a single paragraph about how race is experienced in America. I have learned more from those 112 words than from most book-length studies of the subject: After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world...

The View (after Cataract Surgery) from 60

Posted on April 08, 2008
Youth may be wasted on the young, but wisdom can be wasted on the old.The culture of news, communications, media and education is experiencing one of the greatest inversions in memory. More and more, the old turn to the young to understand the world, American culture and, most of all, technology...

Narrative in the Numbers

Posted on March 24, 2008
RELATED "What It Takes: Behind the Scenes with Goldsmith Winners," by Bill Kirtz. I wish I could read fewer stories about Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and more stories by Anne Hull and Dana Priest...

From Blog to Narrative: Josh Benton Throws Us a Curve

Posted on March 21, 2008
You can imagine how many writing seminars and conferences I've attended since 1977, so you'll excuse me if I confess to an occasional spasm of boredom. "Writing is a process...find a focus...stories are good...nut graph this...blah, blah, blah." Which is why surprising moments of great learning seem so satisfying and joyful...

Roy's Totally Subjective Picks: 85 Wonders of the Journalism World

Posted on March 12, 2008
Contributors: Ellyn Angelotti and Mallary TenoreHere are our lists of finalists for the Wonders of the Journalism World. Our original plan was to have seven wonders in each of seven categories but, like most journalists, we were not slaves to the numbers...

Story Forms and Shapes

Posted on March 12, 2008
1. Inverted pyramid -- Like the pyramids of Egypt, it has passed the test of time.2. Five Ws and H -- Enduring questions that guide reporting.3. Nut graf -- Created a needed revolution in the way we thought about news writing.4. WSJ A-heds -- The cleverest feature stories "floated off" the once grayest page...

Institutions/Organizations

Posted on March 12, 2008
1. The New York Times -- Easy to pick on, impossible to match. The standard bearer over time for excellence in the reporting and editing of news.2. CBS News (the early years) -- Think Murrow, Cronkite, Fred Friendly. Think of the birth of serious television documentaries...

Technologies

Posted on March 12, 2008
1. QWERTY Keyboard -- From the 19th century typewriter to the Blackberry in your pocket, this arrangement of letters has produced most of the world's journalism across all media and platforms.2. Printing Press -- Can't have freedom of the press without the press, right Mr...

Documents

Posted on March 12, 2008
1. First Amendment -- The great granddaddy, grandmommy of them all; protector of five freedoms (can you name them?) So powerful you can stand on it, trample on it, wrap yourself in it -- as long as you dont shout FIRE in a crowded theater.2. ASNE and SPJ codes of conduct -- While the Constitution ensured the freedom of the press, it took serious journalists to argue that with liberty comes responsibility...

People

Posted on March 12, 2008
1. Edward R. Murrow -- Great on the radio, greater on television, embodied the potential of television news.2. George Orwell-- The British author most respected by American journalists for both his fiction and nonfiction.3. Ernie Pyle -- Balladeer of the common soldier, killed in battle...

National Grandma Day?

Posted on March 04, 2008
Today, as I work on a new book titled "The Glamour of Grammar," I turn this column over to, perhaps, my favorite copy editor of all time: Vicki Krueger. I worked with Vicki for years and, with our desks just a few steps apart, turn to her often on matters of style, grammar, and usage...

'The Finest Sports Writer Who Has Ever Lived'?

Posted on February 26, 2008
RELATED Sign up for Roy Peter Clark's "Sports Journalism Summit." Applications and payments will be accepted through March 12, or until all spots are filled.  When I first saw Frank Deford in person, I was surprised by his suave and lanky look, a cross between Boston Blackie and Ichabod Crane...

Hero or Victim: Not the Only Choices

Posted on February 18, 2008
For about 15 years I lived next door to Jack Leonard, one of the greatest men I've ever known. His essential greatness had nothing to do with the fact that he was a quadriplegic. His disabling injury -- sustained during a water skiing accident when he was 21 years old -- came to magnify his greatness, and over the years he became the object of extensive news media coverage, all of it positive...

Love-Crazed Journos Write Their Hearts Out

Posted on February 14, 2008
Little did we realize that our whimsical little short writing contest would attract dozens upon dozens of entries from love-starved writers from all over the world. We're about to name three winners, 10 finalists and a list of honorable mentions. But first, information we've gleaned from the exit polls: 1...

The Shortest Form of All

Posted on February 11, 2008
In an era of journalism business massacres, it's time to turn our attention to Valentine's Day. A little time for a little love will go a long way. I remember a wintry day in Canada some years ago where I was conducting a retreat for a wonderful group of journalists from the Toronto Star...

In Defense of the Horse Race

Posted on February 05, 2008
RELATED Attend the 2008 Sports Journalism Summit, April 16-18, featuring the father-daughter team of Dan Jenkins and Sally Jenkins. To apply, click here."Super Tuesday Tips," by Butch Ward, Jill Geisler and Ellyn Angelotti."Tuesday's Problem: Should Journalists Declare Party Allegiance?" by Kelly McBride...

The Public Bias against the Press

Posted on January 31, 2008
RELATED Sacred Heart University poll: "Americans Slam News Media on Believability." The public bias against the press is a more serious problem for American democracy than the bias (real or perceived) of the press itself. That is one reasonable conclusion to a study of media credibility conducted by Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn...

Send in the Clones

Posted on January 18, 2008
RELATED "Successful Embryo Cloning Documented," San Diego Union-Tribune."Breakthrough? Lab Claims Human Embryo Cloned," TODAY Show video. And so it has begun. News has broken that a private California clinic has produced a human clone for the purposes of extracting its stem cells...

Spare the Change

Posted on January 14, 2008
This is an essay about the word "change" and how our political leaders have drained it of its meaning. It is a word that has inflamed Jeff Jarvis to infantile babbling. RELATED "Civil War and Civil Language: Word Choice and the Newsroom," by Roy Peter Clark...

The Sad Decline of Britney Spears and Our Voyeuristic Complicity

Posted on January 11, 2008
A few weeks ago, I overheard a conversation among women about someone whose skirt was so short that when she sat down her "Britney" was showing. Variations on this joke have appeared since paparazzi shot photos of Britney Spears "going commando," a popular term for appearing in public without the benefit of undergarments...

Christmas Without Snow

Posted on December 19, 2007
I received a very nice Christmas present last week: the new paper cover edition of "Writing Tools."  My publisher Little, Brown has created an even prettier book, if that's possible, the foam green cover now in a classy textured paper stock. Holding a book you've written in your hands is a little like admiring a new baby: you sigh, count the fingers and toes, say a little prayer of thanksgiving and remind yourself that the long months of work were worth it...

A Modest Proposal: Here's to More Cheating in Sports!

Posted on December 13, 2007
For the record, I'm against torture and I'm against cheating in sports. Sort of.Over the next few days, journalists will be having a field day (sports metaphor) covering and commenting upon the revelations in the Mitchell Report about steroid abuse in baseball...

Big News on Writing Tools

Posted on December 10, 2007
To clear the way for what I hope you'll find an exciting new project, I'm tying a big holiday bow on the Writing Tools blog, which will take a little vacation until the New Year. In doing so, I'd like to thank all my colleagues and readers for their encouragement as I continue to share with you the work of "Writing Tools" -- the book, the blog, the Quick List, the podcasts, the seminars and, of course, the musical...

Unearthing a Buried Treasure: Gene Patterson on the Kennedy-Nixon Debate

Posted on November 29, 2007
With the help of my colleague David Shedden, we've unearthed a buried treasure: a column by Gene Patterson, published October 8, 1960, in The Atlanta Constitution, covering the second televised Nixon-Kennedy debate. I had the honor and pleasure of co-editing a book titled "The Changing South of Gene Patterson:  Journalism and Civil Rights, 1960-1968...

The Plagiarism Trap: Is it Ethical to Shoot a Fly with a Bazooka?

Posted on November 28, 2007
As someone who has written about plagiarism for more than 20 years, I think it may be time to re-think the word.  Because the p-word is the scarlet letter of the literary world, because it is associated with a rogues gallery of writers and reporters, it  should be reserved, in my opinion, for the most serious cases of malpractice...

Reverse Plagiarism? Or, Did I Say That?

Posted on November 28, 2007
During a friendly exchange of e-mails, Columbia Missourian editor Tom Warhover noted that the "higher standard" on plagiarism he mentioned was in place long before he arrived at the paper.  In fact, he noted, "the policy comes from, of all people, you!"  RELATED Poynter Online centerpiece: * "The Plagiarism Trap:  Is it Ethical to Shoot a Fly with a Bazooka?" I assumed that the allusion was to an essay I had written for the old Washington Journalism Review in 1983, titled "The Unoriginal Sin...

Does an Epic Revival Say Something about America?

Posted on November 27, 2007
I grew up in the 1950s watching the first Godzilla movies as simple expressions of mindless adventure and dinosaur violence. I remember my shock years later upon reading an analysis that connected the birth of Godzilla -- a destructive monster created by radioactivity -- to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II...

Gaining Altitude: Will Journalists Rise to the Challenge?

Posted on November 21, 2007
There's an idea about the future of newspapers floating over the land and it goes like this:  As more and more breaking news and information drives readers to Web sites, the newspaper of the future will have to change.  It will become more up-scale in its audience and advertising, more selective, more focused, a little brainier...

Two Minutes with Mailer

Posted on November 15, 2007
I saw Norman Mailer in his now discarded flesh on three occasions. The first was in 1969. I was a college student with a summer job in New York City, and you never knew what famous person you'd run into on the streets of the Big Apple. One sunny morning, as I was walked down Fifth Avenue, I saw a small mob gathered on a corner surrounding two men...

Time to Play the Pyramid!

Posted on November 12, 2007
There are few dog and pony shows more productive and long lasting than the one I've shared with my pal Don Fry. Our friendship and collaboration go back almost 37 years, and we agree on many things about the values of journalism and the craft of writing...

The Difference between Good and Great

Posted on November 07, 2007
On the morning of Oct. 8, 2007, I found myself in New York, reading the local newspapers in search of a great headline. I ignored the New York Times because of an old bias that the best headline writers wind up working for the tabloids. Who could forget -- if it really saw the light of day -- the headline, "Headless Body in Topless Bar"? It takes the power of parallelism and kicks it up a notch...

Covering 'Fascist' America

Posted on November 01, 2007
Is America on the road to becoming a fascist state? If so, what should journalists do about it? Those questions come in response to an elaborate argument in Naomi Wolf's latest book "The End of America," an argument she summarized in a recent C-SPAN interview...

Headmaster, Indeed

Posted on October 30, 2007
RELATED "JK, Your Postscript Is a Little Late," by Roy Peter Clark. "Is Dumbledore Gay? Depends on Definitions of 'Is' and 'Gay,' by Edward Rothstein. "Blogospheric Reaction to an Outed Wizard," by Mike Nizza. If there's one thing I do not have, it's a dirty mind...

We Got Da Funk - But Which One?

Posted on October 26, 2007
Some words sound the same, but are spelled differently and carry different meanings. Other words, among my favorites, are near misses, close calls, words that look or sound a bit alike but are rarely used in proximity or rarely confused: poetry and poultry...

The Curse of Chief Wahoo: Enabling Racist Imagery

Posted on October 24, 2007
I received a compliment from a group of journalists who attended the first Unity conference in Atlanta.  One of them told me that they looked through the program, examined all the titles, and voted on the ones they thought were best...

Hater-ation for the Hyphen Nation

Posted on October 19, 2007
Have you noticed how the effects of the American Revolution are being reversed by an invasion of British scolds? The most famous, of course, is Simon Cowell, the imperious judge on "American Idol" ("Go find your vocal coach and ask for a refund.") It now seems that every talent show needs its cranky Brit on the bench...

Can Newspapers Not Suck?

Posted on October 16, 2007
I did not argue last week that it was the journalist's duty to "buy" the paper, only to "read" it.  Anyone who has ever sat on a subway or in an airport lounge knows that you can read a newspaper -- several, in fact  -- without spending a penny...

Your Duty to Read the Paper

Posted on October 11, 2007
One of the great autobiographies of the last 2,000 years is "The Confessions of St. Augustine."  It's a work that must be taken seriously because its author offers such a full and candid description of his own human weaknesses. One chapter begins: "I wish to bring back to mind my past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul...

A New Narrative Structure

Posted on October 06, 2007
Sorry, Buffy. Keep slaying those vampires. Ours has been a passionate journey. I've watched every episode -- all seven seasons -- at least three times. I've sung the praises of your hot plots, clever dialogue, nifty cliffhangers and shapely narratives...

What Would You Have Done?

Posted on October 04, 2007
I am sharing with you a personal essay I wrote for Sunday's St. Petersburg Times. (If any of you would like to link to it, or reprint it, just let me know.) The essay was several years in the making. I had told the story aloud many times, but never figured out how to write it, until now...

Writer, Heal Myself

Posted on September 26, 2007
A phrase from my last column has earned me a bit of attention and feedback. In an essay on the use and abuse of the word "crusade," I referred to Osama Bin Laden as "that spelunking meshuggeneh."  I coined this phrase not long after I advised writers not to show off, but to "murder your darlings...

My Crusade Against 'Crusade'

Posted on September 24, 2007
In the Sept. 9, 2007, edition of The New York Times, a cover feature on presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani carried the headline "The Crusader," a tribute to his reputation as a crime-fighting mayor and to his tough talk against terrorism. The following day in my hometown newspaper, an editorial headline read: "Governor's tax-cut crusade sidesteps hard facts on schools...

When Words Betray Us: Stop Showing Off

Posted on September 21, 2007
Never mind the story. Sometimes a headline alone is enough to fire up a controversy. The New York Daily News once turned the trick with this beauty about a president who refused to help a bankrupt metropolis: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." And now MoveOn...