Are You Literate?

According to Houghton-Mifflin, here are 100 words every high school graduate should know. I certainly didn't know all 100 when I graduated high school. Most I encountered for the first time in college or graduate school. I still would have a hard time using one or two in a sentence today, but I won't tomorrow!

George Orwell and David Foster Wallace on Writing

John Leo's piece about good writing makes a direct reference to George Orwell's great essay on how poor use of language leads to worse political thinking, "Politics and the English Language." Thankfully, we can read Orwell on the Internet today. Orwell isn't always easy to understand, but I don't think I go too far when I saw that if you read nothing else about how to write, you should read this essay.

David Foster Wallace wrote a long essay, "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage" in "Harper's" in 2001. Wallace then revised and lengthened the essay for publication in "Consider the Lobster," his 2005 collection, now available in paperback. I don't know how, but Wallace manages to show off a huge vocabulary, add seemingly endless notes, and still make perfect sense throughout. In either version, "Tense Present" is a worthy successor to Orwell.

John Leo on How to Write Well

Here's a brief primer by John Leo, longtime columnist for "U.S. News and World Reports," on how writers can become better writers. "On Good Writing" makes solid points in plain English.

The Death of Reading?

In an ever more audiovisual age, rumors of the death of reading abound. Even as struggling writers continue to, well, struggle in great numbers for the limited space in journals and newspapers or for the rare book contract, the audience the most successful among them seems to be declining. One bookstore owner in Missouri found he couldn't even give his extra books away, so he resorted to burning them in protest. I can't agree with Mike Bechtel that burning the books is the most effective form of protest, but I think Bechtel is correct, with respect to our society as a whole, that "not reading a book is as good as burning it."