Category: Words
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The F Words: The Fear of F
In an earlier blog I wrote about The Power of F. But now I want to write about a subject that strikes me as very sad: the fear of F. Back in 2020, after City of Light offered me a publishing contract for The F Words, my editor and I discussed the title. Our first…
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Strange Appositives
It is passing strange that in my time as a blogger, I find myself writing about appositives twice. I mean: Really? How many people even know what an appositive is? And why do I end up writing about them twice? But before I answer those questions, I absolutely must address my deliberate use of the…
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The F Words: The Freedom of Silence
For many writers, possibly most, the second chapter of a book is a big problem. One of the main reasons for this problem is that writers spend an inordinate amount of time perfecting their first chapters, this in order to grab an editor’s attention and make a sale. After all that energy and rewriting, one…
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The F Words: Anglo-Saxon Origins
When I see high school students raising protest signs and chanting in support of their teachers, as in the strike (earlier this year) by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, I’m heartened. And when I see that the student chants are poetic in form (We ain’t shy./We ain’t timid./We are angry./We are livid.) I’m more than…
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The F Words: Following the F Words
It stands to reason that, before I sat down to write a YA novel titled The F Words — in which a teen who tags his high school wall with the F word is required to write two poems a week, each about a word that starts with the letter F — I would make…
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The F Words: The Power Of F
On November 5, 2022, I will be one of several presenters at the Plainfield (Illinois) Public Library’s day-long event for writers, running from 10:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. You can read about the individual events, and register for them, by clicking here. As you can see, my presentation is titled The Power of F Words.…
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The F Words: Italics
Italics are a form of typography in which the letters usually slant to the right. In serif fonts such as Palatino, for example, there are slight changes in some of the letters. Notice that the italic lower-case a is different in the italic version. In sans serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial, the italic…
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The F Words: Thinking of F Words
In an earlier blog, The F Words: A Writing Coach, I mentioned that Esther Hershenhorn (the writing coach!) gave me a list of six “threads” to follow throughout my novel, making certain that I didn’t drop any of those threads for too long. One of those six threads was “Cole thinking about F words.” As…
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Anglo-Saxon vs. Latin-French
Approximately 20% (possibly less) of the words in the English language come from Anglo-Saxon roots. Approximately 60% come from Latin, but indirectly — usually through French. The words that come from Anglo-Saxon have been part of the language for hundreds and hundreds of years. They name relationships and actions to which we have immediate, visceral…
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The Stolen Horse and Me
Sometimes there’s a thread running through your life and it takes you decades to notice it. That’s the case with idioms and me. We’ve had a life-long relationship, but I came to notice this only a few years ago. Well, fifteen or so years ago, but that’s a short time compared to how long idioms…
Barbara Gregorich 