"Taking Notes" - WIX Stock Photo One of Feature Friday’s regular blog-readers was taken with a particular passage from last week’s blog...

Gateway, North Cascades off Mountain Loop Hwy - E. A. Hanninen While visiting with family and friends in the Skagit/Sauk/Nooksack/Sumas...

We’ve all grown up with slang, cultural idioms, and whimsical or metaphoric, regional phrasings, righto? Some of it has stuck with us...

The Season’s Greetings to you, Readers! I’ve returned from the great Pacific Northwest’s Skagit Valley, just in time for Vancouver snow....

This Friday’s feature is my bon voyage post — many of you readers may recall a comment I made in the email subscription, or in our...

Anybody ever ask you, “What’s the difference between prose and poetry?” Like there’s one difference. Let’s run with this, though, say...

October has always been my favorite time of year, what with the vibrant contrasts of azure skies and yellow-orange leaves, a mix of...

It’s gotta be the confusion about what marks a noun as “collective” that makes people bend grammar all over the place trying to sound...

I thought I would be traveling to visit with family about this time in October, but as it turns out, my plans have been bumped out for...

For those of you starting to put together your first poetry collection, or are thinking about doing so, let me first say,...

Perhaps you remember your grade-school, English teachers mentioning “compound words” when you were first learning to read and write. Not...

So, you’ve decided it’s time to hire an editor. What are the next steps? You wonder. How do you decide which editor to contact? You’d...

Spellcheckers can be useful tools for writers, and in particular, for bad spellers. However, there are plenty of mistakes that...

In my last blogpost, I talked about the Subjunctive Mood, and noted that there are 4 classifications within it. To refresh ourselves once...

Most writers of English are not likely to recall from high school or college what the term “subjunctive mood” means. Even if they...

Last night I started reading a new book, and by this morning, I was having a real moanfest with myself about how tired I am of books and...

A common piece of advice: “Write like you talk.” Sounds like a good idea. Simplify, talk straight, all that— but is it always a good...

When you’re self-editing a manuscript, it may help you to do what a lot of professional editors do: Make a checklist. An editor’s...

The business of creating titles can be complicated. Titles have purpose. Least of all, they put a short (or long) name to a body of words...

I’m mainly speaking to American, and sometimes Canadian, experience here, when I bring up the phrase “British invasion.” Am I talking...