Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy: In the end, it comes down to what a scholar is trying to achieve. If the goal is just narrow professional success — getting tenure, earning a decent salary, etc. — then bad writing isn’t a huge handicap and may even confer some advantages. But if the goal is to…
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In line with my last post, I got an email around noon yesterday from my favorite editor at the Chronicle of Higher Education. We worked together on my flogging piece. He asked if I could write 1,000 words on James Q. Wilson. Quickly. For $500. Why, yes, I replied, I think I can. I’ve always…
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I not a fan of arbitrary grammar rules. And now I’m going to bore you with one. I don’t like rules for rules’ sake (eg: split infinitives, ending sentences in preposition, etc.) Along with being based in some bizarre Latin-lover’s 19th-century wet dream, such rules get in the way of style. Rules are supposed to…
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Cops hate paperwork. Hell, everybody hates paperwork. But policing has more of it on a day-to-day basis than most occupations. And there’s an art to writing a good police report. I like to think my writing skills made me a better police officer. And it’s why as a professor I stress the importance of writing…
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I’m ran the latest draft of my book through a word-frequency count. 47 uses of “simply”?! That’s simply too many, and I got that down to 11 (mostly just by deleting them–it’s interesting how often “simply” simply isn’t needed). Now I’m working on “certainly,” “of course,” and “actually.” It’s very easy to fall on such…
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If you’re not a writer or a computer nerd, just skip this. Really. I’m editing my book (and being doing so for a long while). It’s very near done and still a very slow process. About six hours ago, I bought a text-to-speech program online for $50 (NaturalSoft, for what it’s worth. I have no…
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People sometimes think I don’t work much (an opinion only reinforced when they see me having my morning coffee at 2pm and still in my bathrobe at dinner time). But I’m a night owl and I work from home. So along with teaching four classes (a very heavy load for a college professor), I have…
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