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Years of scholarly instruction can make your writing technically correct; Wordophilia can help you give your words more meaning. From vocabulary to style, grammar to creativity - a place for writers of all kinds to read about and discuss their craft.

Scribophile

April 14th 2009 18:56
Scribophile logo

I've been keeping half an eye on this site for a little while now. I heard about it from a fellow MyLotter and it struck me that it was somewhat similar to the Authonomy site that Moonglow posted about.

The big difference here is that Scribophile is not run by a publishing house. It's a social thing, with lots of writers of all kinds reading, critiquing each other's work, sharing ideas and the usual nonsense in the forums. Consequently, there's less pressure on the people posting their work: there's also less possibility of it being picked up for publishing, but that's the trade-off.

I've spent some time on there today, having a look around, and it seems really friendly. There's some great stuff available to read, the work-posting options cover the problems of copyrights nicely and it seems to be a fairly active community.

If you're a bit put off by Authonomy's publisher tie-ins and just want to share your work with other amateurs (and professionals, but in a more social setting), it might be a good choice.

I shall be going back, I think. We 'philes should stick together. And not because someone spilled glue on us.

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10 Stupid Spelling Mistakes To Avoid

April 11th 2009 18:28
Image by Kevin Marks

Time for a little finger-pointing fun today, methinks. I'm not going to get into that whole "correct spelling and grammar" argument - you know, the one about the language dying. Why not? Well, mostly because it's been done to death a million times, but also because it always degenerates into a personal mud-throwing affair (and there's far too much of that going on already).

So I thought I'd put together a quick list of the ten spelling mistakes I've seen most frequently, along with pictures (wherever possible) - just hit the links. These are the errors that make bloggers, writers or even companies look incredibly stupid. Or is that "stoopid"?

1. Differance. The word is 'difference'. Unfortunately, not even schools can manage to get this one right.

2. Mabye. I guess it might be right, phonetically. Depends where you're from. Around here, we spell it "maybe". As in, "it may be".

3. Sucess. Always two c's, please! Especially if you're in a "people" industry.

4. Loose. Only losers spell lose incorrectly. Loose is more appropriate when talking about morals, or clothes.

5. Then. Oh, it makes me want to scream when people use "then" instead of "than". More then anything else!

6. Gullable. It's spelled "gullible", not "gullable". Sigh.*

7. Non-existant. It doesn't exist! It's "non-existent", with an e. By the way, put the correct spelling into the dictionary.com web site and ask it to search... it can't find any matching results!

8. Priviledge. It's "privilege". It's not a shortened version of "private ledge" or something. LOLcats the world over would disagree, though.

9. Can not be beat. How are we supposed to read this? It can not-be-beat? Or it cannot be beat. Beetroot? "Beat" Takeshi? Yes, it's common parlance, but it's written "cannot be beaten".

10. Strait. It might be straightforward for you or me to get this straight, but a lot of people are in dire straits when spelling straight. A strait is a relatively narrow passageway connecting two bodies of water.

* Hah, gotcha! It's spelled either way. I was just kidding!

Title image by Kevin Marks

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Writing And Plagiarism

April 8th 2009 13:05
Plagiarism Is Theft

plagiarism –noun The unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.
(Dictionary.com Unabridged. Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.)
[ Click here to read more ]
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Character Death And Murder

April 4th 2009 12:06
Grim Reaper

A combination of two things brought this subject to mind: firstly, the utterly pointless, formulaic 'sacrifice' death of Adrian Lester's character in Doomsday and secondly this post by Janice over on her blog.

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Editing Aloud

April 2nd 2009 12:19
Shout and scream

I don't remember when or where I saw (or heard) this piece of advice, but it's incredibly effective. I was reminded of it yesterday, when I read a paragraph of something I'd written to my partner. I stopped half-way through and had to correct an error that I hadn't noticed even when I'd read the piece several times.
[ADVERT


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How To Write Better

April 2nd 2009 00:18
Temporally Closed

Quite possibly the scariest of all subjects for a writer is how to write better. Few are the authors who are satisfied with their work: you can be sure that even the greatest novelists of our time spend far too many hours wondering whether their latest tale will be a success, whether their readers will like it and - above all - whether their editor will shred it into tiny little pieces and force them to rewrite the whole thing!

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Writers' Advice Sucks

March 31st 2009 20:56
Advice

That may seem like an incredibly stupid thing to say on a blog about writing, where the majority of posts are advice. In a way, it is. On the other hand, it's very easy to forget that the vast majority of web sites giving advice to writers are built and maintained by people who only know a tiny bit more than their readers. Like any craft, there are some experts, but there are also loads of noobs.

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How To Write Articles

March 25th 2009 15:40
How to write articles

Just today, I saw another request for guidance on this subject on one of the forums (or fora for the Latin speakers) I frequent. The call for help usually comes from new writers or people who do not have English as their first language. I thought I'd lay out one method of writing, which works for me.

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Typecasting

March 23rd 2009 23:20
Die Hard Indiana Jones Lethal Weapon
One of these things is not like the others... or is it?

In storytelling, it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid stereotypical characters. Despite the fact that there are more subjects being covered in more ways than ever before, especially with the relatively new genres such as tech fiction, humorous fantasy, psychological thrillers and so on, creating a hero's personality that has not been seen or used a dozen times already is an enormous challenge.

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The Word Philes 5

March 20th 2009 23:23
The Word Philes
The Word Philes

This edition of The Word Philes is brought to you courtesy of a women's clothing catalogue. I kid you not. Recently, I ordered some new tops for my lady (it's Spring, new clothes are apparently as essential as food and drink right now) and the bank refused my card. No idea why, but it's a bank, so that's normal: the re-order worked fine, of course.

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