Political analysis of campaign debates has long been the business of the chatterati: news analysts, commentators, spin doctors. That won’t change, at least not in the ’08 presidential campaign.

But now the digerati — computer wizards — have teamed… Read more

Forget politics. Anyone who’s interested in clarity should study this post on Slate.com by author Kitty Burns Florey: “Diagramming Sarah: Can Palin’s sentences stand up to a grammarian?”

In her post, the novelist and copy editor says:

… Read more

At 4:40 p.m., Friday, Sept. 12, a Metrolink commuter train collided with an oncoming freight train in Chatsworth, Calif., northwest of Los Angeles. The crash, the Los Angeles Times reported, was “the worst in modern California history,” killing 25 and… Read more

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Having trouble getting the writing done?

I faced that familiar problem a few days ago. I had finished a chapter of my journalism textbook, patted myself on the back, and promptly felt myself shutting down. Starting the next… Read more

CORRECTION APPENDED

Unread New Yorkers have been gathering dust lately — sprawled on the coffee table in the living room, perilously stacked on the bedroom bureau and resisting gravity in unstable columns on every unclaimed office… Read more

I’ve never played chess. It always seemed too hard to learn. But a story in last week’s New York Times has me thinking about giving the game another shot.

The story focused on plans to introduce… Read more

We know all about the fog of war, but what about its smells?

In newsrooms I’ve visited I usually offer a bounty to anyone who can locate a story with sensory details that require the nose. I’ve never had… Read more

On January 17, 2006, I launched “The Mechanic and the Muse,” a blog that would, I hoped, track my continuing quest to master the writing craft and share the lessons that every act of writing contains — from fact-gathering… Read more