This is a guest post by Don Lee. If you want to write for Daily Writing Tips check the guidelines here.
When I write about classical music for a general audience, I try to reassure readers, if only implicitly, that they don’t have to understand specialized music terms in order to enjoy the music itself.
Where writers are concerned, I expect more.
Although I’m glad to see writers borrow expressions that can resonate beyond classical music, a misunderstanding can lead to writing that’s slightly out of tune.
Among the music terms that can be especially troublesome is crescendo. For example, take this metaphorical use in a recent wire service story:
Klug, meanwhile, is making his third Olympics—a string that began when snowboarding was introduced in 1998 and reached its crescendo on a sunsplashed day in Park City, Utah, eight years ago.
Here’s the problem: a crescendo is not a destination;…

Barbara McNichol forwarded me a question about the expression one-off as used to mean “one of a kind.”
I really thought the correct slang was ‘one OF’, not OFF, as in short for ‘one of a kind’. So if that’s true, how did ‘one of’ morph into ‘one off’? Or is it simply that people are spelling it incorrectly?
Although the definition of one-off contains the word of, the expression has always been one-off.
The expression is fairly new in American usage. It began as a British expression and derives from manufacturing jargon. Its first recorded date of use is 1934.
As a noun, one-off is defined in the OED as
A manufactured product made as the only one of its kind; a prototype; (more generally) something not repeated.
One-off can also be used as an adjective:
Made or done as the only one of its kind; unique, not repeated.…

Agent Advice is
a series of quick interviews with literary and script agents who talk with Guide
to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about
anything else.

This installment features Kate Epstein of The
Epstein Literary Agency.
Kate founded her agency
in 2005, after four years’ acquisitions experience at Adams Media. Kate Epstein holds
a B.A. with Highest Honors in English from the University of
Michigan. She lives with her husband and two children outside Boston.
 
She is seeking: The only fiction she accepts is YA. On the nonfiction side,
she likes

Crafts, Fashion, Health,
Humor, Inspiration. Journalism, Lifestyles, Memoir. Nonfiction Narrative, Parenting,
Pets, Popular Culture, Reference, Relationships, Self-Help, Travel, and Women’s Interest

GLA
: How did you become an agent?KE: The short answer is that I quit my editor job, paid my town $20 for a business
certificate, and hung out my shingle. My…

Apparently sentential adverbs are a secret. An open secret, of course, which explains why almost everyone knows about them and uses them regularly. Everyone, of course, except prescriptivists. I already talked about this regarding prescriptivists’ insistence that hopefully can’t be used as a sentential adverb, but now I’ve come across it again in the belief that most importantly can’t be used as a sentential adverb, as in (1a), and that instead most important should be employed (1b):
(1a) Most importantly, you want to intrigue students [...]
(1b) Most important, you want to intrigue students.
When I read that, I thought they were putting me on. (1b) sounds awfully awkward to me. If were editing someone and they came to me with this sentence, I would immediately suggest that most importantly was surely what they meant. If they insisted on using the adjectival form, I’d want something stronger than a comma…

Last night I annoyed my husband by wigging out over a plot hole in our favorite TV show, House. The kind of thing I’d dutifully correct or query in a manuscript. The kind of thing that makes a writer look dumb.Here’s a summary (and with no spoilers for the DVR crowd):House has been seen reading The Golden Bowl by Henry James for weeks…. Or has he? Wilson observes that the book House is reading seems to be about half the known page length of The Golden Bowl. And so he steals into House’s office and takes the dust jacket off the book and discovers that it’s actually a totally different book under there!Well, here’s the problem with that. Assuming both books are the same trim size (standard trim for a hardcover book is 6 1/8 x 9 1/4), if one book has twice as many pages, its dust jacket would…

One of the side-effects of the ever-changing media landscape is that various media companies are increasingly operating outside of their comfort zones. Instead of plodding away in the niches they’ve mastered over a great many years, some media companies think that because the Internet exists, they have a license to dabble willy-nilly in all kinds of newfangled media. The Dallas Morning News launched in print in 1885. Now, 125 years later, the newspaper is dabbling in video content–and screwing up as the discerning eye of Stan Kost recently revealed.

In an e-mail, Kost wrote the Proofreader:

I don’t think that Jay-Z is a comic book villain, but The Dallas Morning News may think so. In a recent video about LeBron James and Jay-Z, the latter is described as a “Music mongul” – I’m sure that they meant “mogul”. After all, Mongul is this comic book villain.As you can see in…

How do you keep your blogging fingers nimble and your blogging mind active when you’re not blogging?
How do you make sure it feels easy and natural to re-enter the blogging sphere when you’re ready to come back from a break?
The answer: Keep blogging even when you’re not.

Here are some of my hows:
1. Read other blogs
(Yes, blog reading is an integral part of blogging)
2. Comment on other blogs
(ditto)
3. Stay in touch on Twitter
4. Work through your archives
Tidy up.  Fix your categories.  Read and learn from what you’ve already written.  It’s telling you something.
5. Set up new blog spaces to practice and experiment
Blogs give us space to explore, to try things out, to write with a different voice (maybe more like our own).  We can get tongue tied writing for others.  Private space that no-one knows about can give you…

Part 2 of “Words Our Writing Can Do Without”
My business development coach (who is neither green nor hundreds of years old, but is at least as wise as the Star Wars character) likes to say, “There is no try.”
Here’s her rationale: Too many times, when people fall short of achieving their goals, they excuse themselves with the words, “Well, I tried.” Unfortunately, in most cases, that really isn’t good enough.
If I miss deadlines and tell my editors, “Well, I tried to make the deadline, I really did,”… first of all, I’m using a comma splice. (We’ll get to that later.) More importantly, it’s a lame excuse. It may work a few times, but if it becomes a pattern, I’ll be looking for new clients.
Additionally, when we begin an endeavor with the philosophy that we’ll “try” it, we’re setting ourselves up for failure before we begin. If…

A Guest Post by Wayne E. Pollard, Creator of Bo’s Café Life
I believe that persistence is the most important trait you should have if you want to get published. To get my first piece published in The New York Times, I pitched it to at least five different editors until I found one who was interested in the piece.
Before pitching that piece to The New York Times, I had pitched it to an editor at The Village Voice, who rejected it. If I hadn’t pitched it to The New York Times, the piece would still be sitting in a file on my computer, unpublished.
To get published, you must query constantly. Send out queries every day if you can and be persistent because persistence pays. Yes, persistence pays – but not enough to cover the rent. In addition to being persistent, to get published, you must know how…

There’s a wonderful European-style market and bakery in the Oak Lawn area of Dallas. They serve everything from made-to-order salads and sandwiches to chef-prepared, ready-to-eat meals.
But what I love most about the place is the sign on the door when you leave. It’s classic.
The sign doesn’t read “Please Come Again” or “Thank You for Your Business” or some other typical exit sign platitude.
It says . . .
“See you tomorrow.”
That kind of confidence is compelling and downright sexy. Sure, a fantastic product, service, or experience is the starting point from which confidence comes, but too many people play it scared and safe even when what they offer is truly great.
I’m not talking about arrogance. Arrogance is an indication of fear, not assurance.
Too many people, however, approach copywriting from a defensive mindset. You’re already back on your heels from the start, instead of proudly sharing…

Question of the day: What are your thoughts on blurbs? I’m an unpublished author but the more I hear about blurbs, the more nervous they make me…I have to actually ask other authors to review my work for me?
Well, since you asked, I’ll voice what is likely an unpopular opinion, but that’s never stopped me before. :) And that is this: I HATE blurbs – hated asking for them, hate being on the receiving end of being asked (more on that below – it’s not how it sounds), hate the nepotism that comes along with them, hate that the industry expects authors to round up blurbs and that these blurbs somehow make a book more worthy or lucrative.
Have I made that clear enough? :)
Before I’m accused of not being a team-player, let me explain my reasoning. To begin with, other than for a debut author, I’m not…

This week’s roundup of grammar, style and other editing missteps comes in the form of the After Deadline Quiz. The list includes contributions from colleagues and from several sharp-eyed readers.

The message came onto the display panel of my Saab yesterday – “Time for Service.” Since cars have somehow become smarter than people, I took it seriously enough to look it up online. Seems the car has been pre-programmed to give service notices at particular mileage or date points. Since we just turned over 56K, that corresponded with what Saab’s website was saying. I was glad because it meant I didn’t have to crawl under the hood and locate, then replace whatever cable or part was giving me fits.Wouldn’t it be nice if we came with these notices? Our cars, our homes, our kids, our pets all get regular attention and care. Our businesses? Ourselves? Not so much. If your business had a “time for service” notice, what would it be reminding you to do? Most likely it would be a marketing reminder or a reminder to chase down those…

If you missed part one of author Skyler White’s craft essay on myth and fact, click here, then come back. Skyler’s debut novel, and Falling, Fly, has been dubbed a “trippy urban fantasy” by Publisher’s Weekly. She was about to tell us how “developing a character by creating their reality in tandem with their mythology” [...]

When thinking about website monetization, Google Adsense is probably the first thing that came to the mind of many people. Created in 2004, Adsense is the easiest way to make money online. Making real money with Google Adsense is not as easy as it seems, but if Adsense wasn’t an efficient way to make money online, people would stop using it.
In this article, I’m going to show you 10 efficient tips to really make money with Adsense.

Understand on which sites Adsense works
tweetmeme_source = ‘catswhocode’;Is it possible to really make money with Adsense? The answer is definitely yes. But not on all kind of sites. For example, I own a blog in French about visiting New York City (it is called Visiter New York) and Adsense works very well on it. On the other hand, my most popular site, Cats Who Code always had terrible results with Adsense,…