Category: Writing
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The Stephen Colbert of Punctuation
I’m reprinting here a review of one of my favorite books from a few years back. Enjoy! Benjamin Dreyer is the Stephen Colbert of grammar, style, and punctuation—informative while always being cheerfully acerbic. When he tells us in Dreyer’s English to never use actually, it is “because, seriously, it serves no purpose I can think […]
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Entitled to the Truth?
I was with a group of friends recently who have known each other for years . . . ok, decades. Well, let’s just admit it all up front. We are a bunch of old codgers. We have lived a lot of life together, seen our children grow and marry and have their own children. We’ve […]
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We Aren’t As Reasonable As We Think
Most of us think of ourselves as reasonable, rational human beings who make decisions and come to conclusions using facts and logic. I know I do. That’s also what Langdon Gilkey thought of himself and his two thousand fellow prisoners in a Japanese detention camp during World War II. He was amazed to find out […]
