Word Matters Articles

World Building: Slang, Idioms & Adages

Slang, Idioms, adages and folk sayings are a terrific way to make sure characters are grounded in their setting and slip in some world-building that doesn’t require a lot of description.

Let Me Introduce Myself

The phrases we use to give our name provide a glimpse into personality and psychology.

Collecting Words

One way to expand your working vocabulary is to give new words time to become familiar before you use them.

Let Me Introduce Myself

Let Me Introduce Myself

The phrases we use to give our name provide a glimpse into personality and psychology.

Collecting Words

Collecting Words

One way to expand your working vocabulary is to give new words time to become familiar before you use them.

Punctuation Marks & Traffic Signs

Punctuation Marks & Traffic Signs

I’ve been in the car a lot lately. In fact, almost all of my writing time has been spent driving. I always hope that those hours in the car could be good thinking time for fiction planning, but they just aren’t. Deep thinking and hurtling along a road at seventy miles...

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Noah Webster, Demoralized

Noah Webster, Demoralized

Last weekend, I visited Dearborn, MI — specifically, the Henry Ford [museum] and Greenfield Village. Lots of interesting old cars and so on in the museum, as you'd expect. (My favorites: the Bugatti and the X-Prize winner.) Greenfield Village was good, too. The...

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Philology & Logophilia

One of Dictionary.com’s words of the day last week was “philology.” An interesting word. The second definition given, which is the more familiar one now, is “the study of literary texts and of written records” – usually related to determining meaning, authenticity,...

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