Sunday, August 12, 2007

Quick Links: Free Toys, Networking, and Finger Shaking

Grammar Now! offers a fun pair of tools when know your question and need a quick answer. The rest of the site appears dedicated to things you have to pay for, but the tool dictionary and grammar term tools are free.

If that's not enough grammatical entertainment for you, try taking a grammar safari. This idea combines excellent language practice with playing on the Internet – what more could you want?

For those of you looking for more information on my position from yesterday, please take a read through the argument presented at owlcroft.com. Its eloquence and logic may persuade you if I failed. As a bonus, the examples give you a few laughs along the way.

If you're looking for a place to network with writers and educators, take a wander though the Association of Writers and Writing Programs's fora for writers. They offer a separate forum each for fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. The “General Chat” forum shows a few calls for submission from a few journals, although they date back several months.

Last, take a peek at Peak Writing's article about what not to do in your introduction. The third point makes the best point: don't use a dictionary definition. If you can't explain your topic without resorting to this tactic then you shouldn't be writing about it in the first place. Demonstrate your grasp of the subject with your writing. Don't rely on stilted and predictable openings like, “The definition of shoehorn at Dictionary.com is...” Readers will leave without bothering to get any further than that.


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