When I Stopped Trusting Adjectives
I spent a year deleting every adjective I could, and my prose got stronger. This is what I learned about why adjectives fail, and when they don't.
The Wurding Journal
Essays on writing, published by Wurding.
The Trouble with Better
I keep catching myself writing better. This is what I found when I actually stopped to look at the word.
The Vocabulary of Desire
I've been drafting an intimate scene this month, and every time I've reached for the obvious word it has gone flat on the page. This is my attempt to work out why.
Why Synonyms Fail Writers
I've been staring at a thesaurus for twenty years, and I finally worked out why the list is always wrong.
The Five Neighborhoods of Cold
I wanted to work through what actually happens when I search for a word - and I picked cold because it's where I keep getting stuck.
The Vocabulary of Darkness
I've been re-reading Shirley Jackson and Cormac McCarthy this year, and what I keep noticing is how carefully they avoid the obvious word.
Sound Before Meaning
I've been thinking about how the tools I use assume I'm hunting meaning first. When I'm writing well, I'm usually not.
The Trouble with Very
I've been counting how often I write very, and the number is embarrassing. This is what happens when I force myself to delete it.
Hemingway's One-Syllable Problem
I tried to write like Hemingway for a month - short words, short sentences, no ornament. Here's what I learned about what his style can do, and what it can't.
The Thesaurus Session That Changed How I Write
I sat down with a thesaurus one afternoon, convinced I just needed better synonyms. What I found instead was that I'd been asking the wrong question entirely.
The Quiet Violence of "Just"
It's four letters long and we barely notice it. But just is one of the most quietly diminishing words in English - and once you see what it does, you can't unsee it.
When to Use "Fewer" and When Nobody Cares
The fewer-versus-less rule is real, it's simple, and it's also the favorite weapon of pedants everywhere. Here's when the distinction earns its keep - and when to let it go.
Why "Nice" Is the Most Passive-Aggressive Word in English
It started as a compliment. Somewhere along the way it curdled into a polite insult, and almost nobody noticed. A short history of how nice went sour.
Ten Words for Feelings You've Had but Couldn't Name
You know the feeling. You just don't have the word for it. Ten words, borrowed from around the world, for the emotions English somehow forgot to name.
What Raymond Carver Left Out
Carver's stories are famous for their emptiness - the plain words, the missing explanations. But minimalism isn't the absence of choice. It's the hardest vocabulary choice of all.
The Words Companies Use When They're Firing You
Rightsizing. Transitioning. Letting you go. Nobody gets fired anymore - they get restructured. A look at the language of layoffs, and what the euphemisms are really protecting.
The Real Difference Between "Farther" and "Further"
Most people use them interchangeably, and mostly get away with it. But there's a quiet, useful distinction hiding here - one about the difference between miles and meaning.
The Poet Who Only Used 850 Words
In 1930 a Cambridge scholar boiled English down to 850 words and claimed you could say anything with them. I spent a week writing inside that cage - and found out what constraint really does to a sentence.
How Politicians Say Nothing in Many Words
Mistakes were made. Lessons will be learned. We take these concerns seriously. A tour of professional evasion - and the small grammatical tricks that let someone talk for an hour and commit to nothing.
The Difference Between "Empathy" and "Sympathy" (It Matters More Than You Think)
We treat them as near-synonyms. They're not. One stands beside you, the other feels with you - and confusing them changes how we comfort, apologize, and connect.
The Words We Use to Avoid Saying "Died"
Passed away. Lost. No longer with us. We have a hundred ways to say died without saying it - and each one tells you something about how much we fear the plain word, and the thing it names.
The Rise of "Impactful" and the Death of Precision
Impactful means something had an effect. Which effect? How big? Good or bad? The word refuses to say. A look at how corporate English trades precision for the appearance of it.
Who Gets to Be "Articulate"?
It sounds like praise. But a compliment can carry a whole set of buried assumptions - and articulate is one of the most loaded words we hand out. A look at what it reveals about the person saying it.