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Legal Writing

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Roy Peter Clark provides tools for your writing toolbox

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Last Entry: April 01, 2011 at 01:01:00

When Scandals Strike Celebrities Like Tiger Woods, Try Practicing 'Collateral Journalism'

Posted on February 18, 2010
Televised confessions and apologies have become the modern equivalent of the pillories in the public squares of Puritan America. The sinner is exposed. Jeers and insults are hurled. He becomes not just an object of derision, but a cautionary tale for others who might be tempted by the sins of the flesh...

Finding Focus by Asking What the Story is Really About

Posted on February 17, 2010
My pal Chip Scanlan now teaches writing at Columbia, and I assume he is asking his students a couple of questions that he introduced into Poynter's writing workshops years ago. These two questions have become the rudders for our little ship of learning:"What is your story about?""No, what is your story REALLY about?"Enter Edgar Allan Poe, known more as a Gothic storyteller than a literary critic...

X-Ray Reading Helps Interpret Author's Intentions

Posted on February 10, 2010
Last week I made the case that the best writers were also the best readers, that they could peer down beneath a text to see the strategies of meaning. I shared with you the opening passage from the novel "Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann, and invited your insight and commentary...

Develop X-Ray Reading Skills to Improve Your Writing

Posted on February 03, 2010
How do writers read? I've come to believe that writers see things in texts that are invisible to others. Moreover, I have a theory that the best writers are the best readers, possessed with a kind of X-ray vision that allows them to peer through the surface of a text, to see the machinery whirring underneath...

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What J.D. Salinger Taught Me about Literary Use of the F-Word

Posted on January 28, 2010
When I first heard of the death of reclusive author J.D. Salinger, who was 91, the news reminded me of the first time I used the F-word. The year was 1956. I was 8 years old. One of the Masterson brothers told me a joke, and he thought it was so funny I ran home to tell my mother...

Learn How Key Words Are Related By Examining Their Roots

Posted on January 27, 2010
When you live inside the English language, you begin to see associations that are invisible to others, the way that the little kid in the movie "The Sixth Sense" sees dead people. Making connections between words is, indeed, a lively art.I remember the day I bumped into my colleague Vanessa Goodrum, who was dressed in a gray fleece vest with a white Poynter logo on it...

Steve Lovelady's Writing Legacy Illustrated in ASNE Speech

Posted on January 21, 2010
I can't remember what I had for breakfast, but I can remember the day 30 years ago that I met Steve Lovelady for the first time. It was April 10, 1978, at a convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE). The title of the panel was "Can Writing Be Taught?" and it would be my debut as the writing coach of the St...

Why 'Begs the Question' Doesn't Mean What You Think it Does

Posted on January 20, 2010
I took a Logic class my freshman year in college and could not then -- or now -- tell you the difference between a syllogism and a window sill. That confession of logical incompetence begs the question [Editor's note: Roy is about to misuse the phrase "beg the question" and needs a time out...

Live Chat Tuesday: Discuss Your Most Common Writing Errors

Posted on January 15, 2010
Last week I shared with you a list of the most common errors I've encountered as a writer and a teacher. Many of you were kind enough to share your favorite language mistakes, and now I'm eager to discuss them with you. Join us Tuesday January, 19, at 1 p...

Keep a List of Your Most Common Language Errors

Posted on January 13, 2010
I began teaching writing at a small college in Montgomery, Ala., quite a distance in so many ways from my native New York City. In the Cradle of the Confederacy I helped develop English 100, a course for students who had not yet mastered basic language skills...

Take a Tour of the Book-Writing Process

Posted on January 06, 2010
I wrote an essay when I turned 30 about all the things I realized I would never accomplish in my life, things I had once daydreamed about, such as playing center field for the Yankees or starring in a movie with Ann-Margret. I also described a few things that I would like to accomplish, and one of them was to write a book...

Live Chat: How to Write a Book

Posted on January 05, 2010
When I was 30 years old, I wrote a column that revealed my goal in life was to write one good book. The problem: I didn't know how. Today I can stand in front of a stack of 15 books that carry my name as author or editor. I've learned a few tricks along the way, and now I'm eager to share those secret strategies with you in a live chat Friday, January 8 at 1 p...

What One Revision Can Teach Us About the Elements of English

Posted on December 30, 2009
My favorite writing exercise involves the revision of a single sentence about a funeral service held at the Georgia Aquarium for a beluga whale, dead from a bacterial infection. The loss of the charismatic mammal was deeply felt and inspired a public ceremony of mourning...

Use the Paragraph to Mortar Sentences into a Building Block

Posted on December 23, 2009
I've come to praise the paragraph, not to bury it. Such appreciation was not always my thing. The early instruction I received made construction of a paragraph seem so mechanical, so formulaic, so detached from my writerly instincts that I rebelled.The paragraphs in my favorite books did not always have a topic sentence, three supporting examples and a sharp, logical conclusion...

Match Your Diction to Your Mission in Writing

Posted on December 16, 2009
In my writing and teaching, I've come to understand the value of the word "diction" in solving some of my most important language problems. It comes from the Latin word for "oratory" and "speech" and belongs to a cluster of words from the same root, including "dictionary," "dictum," "dictation" and even "dictator...

Are Writers Using TMA (Too Many Acronyms)?

Posted on December 09, 2009
ROFL from TMI.If you happen to be acronymically impaired, that secret message means Rolling On the Floor Laughing from Too Much Information. I may have come of age in the Age of Aquarius, but I'm growing old in the Age of the Acronym.When I was a little kid in Catholic school, some of the other students would write the letters JMJ atop their papers and worksheets...

New Questions about Tiger Woods Coverage

Posted on December 04, 2009
I was a guest this week on WHYY's radio talk show "Radio Times" to discuss coverage of the Tiger Woods scandal. The host, Marty Moss-Coane, seemed at first a little apologetic to her audience that a public radio hour was being devoted to celebrity gossip...

Archived Chat: What Do Great Writing Teachers Do?

Posted on December 03, 2009
In Roy Peter Clark's recent blog post, What the Best Wrting Teachers Do, How Students Can Learn From Them, he shared behaviors practiced by the best writing teachers. In this week's educator chat, Roy Peter Clark chatted about practices a writing teacher can follow to help students improve their writing...

What the Best Writing Teachers Do, How Students Can Learn From Them

Posted on December 02, 2009
You get report cards, and so should your teachers. You don't need a great writing teacher, or even a good one, to become a good writer yourself -- but it sure helps. And becoming a good writer will help you be a better student, a better worker, a better citizen and a better person...

Angel vs. Devil on How Tiger Woods' Accident Should Be Covered

Posted on December 01, 2009
As I grow older and less wise, I find myself in arguments with -- of all people -- myself. An Angel version of myself will often appear on one shoulder ready to stick a lance through the Lucifer version of me on the other. One side of me opposes capital punishment; the other yells "Fry him!" I oppose torture in all cases, sort of...

8 Tips To Help You Master 'Affect' and 'Effect'

Posted on November 24, 2009
Live inside the English language long enough, begin to see grammar as glamorous, and you will experience many sweet moments of epiphany. The light may shine, for example, when you solve a language puzzle that has long left you baffled. It's the same kind of rush as when you've mastered a new dance step or an elegant new jazz riff on the piano...

Use Theme to Lift Readers to a Higher View of the Story

Posted on November 18, 2009
Two days a week, about 50 steps from my desk, sits another writer in another office finishing up another book. His name is Tom French. We met years and years ago at a Bruce Springsteen concert, and we have been writing pals ever since. We share the same agent and a long friendship, but it is a coincidence that has us writing our books at the same time in the same place...

Step Into the Mystery of Practical English with the Glamour of Grammar

Posted on November 18, 2009
Since my book "Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer" was conceived on this Web site, I would like to bring you up to date on what has happened to the book since its publication three years ago. I also have some news on how you can get your hands on these writing strategies both old and new...

Playing, Singing and Writing: Life Lessons from Les, Shirley and Gene

Posted on September 17, 2009
As a young man, I imagined that the last quarter of my life would be taken up with a little travel, good eating, walking my dog along the seashore and taking my grandkids to the ballpark. But now, at 61, things look a little different. After 30 years at The Poynter Institute, when I peer down that road yonder, I see many more years of productive work -- with a little golf thrown in...

From Telegraph to Twitter: The Language of the Short Form

Posted on September 04, 2009
I guess you could say that I'm a late adopter. I have no Facebook account. I remain skeptical of PowerPoint presentations. My favorite technology is still the book, although my new iPhone is catching up fast. I admit it: I still write the occasional essay in longhand...

Before the Gates Arrest: Race and the Case for Common Courtesy

Posted on July 30, 2009
The arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and its aftermath brought to mind a newspaper column written on Sept. 30, 1960, by Gene Patterson, then editor of The Atlanta Constitution. The column gave an account of a traffic accident in a small Georgia town, but, as with most great essays, it turned out to be about something far deeper, and more enduring...

Lesson of the 'Mexican Flu': Beware Language Prejudices

Posted on April 29, 2009
I heard a report on NPR this morning about an Israeli leader who suggested that people not refer to the new strain of influenza as the Swine Flu. His comment came in deference to Orthodox Jews, those who would not want anyone to think -- should they become infected -- that they had somehow violated the strictest Jewish health and dietary laws...

Sports Journalists Score With Multiplatform Reinvention

Posted on March 20, 2009
RELATEDWhen sports journalists gather in St. Petersburg on April 22-24, the talk will be about re-invention: how to survive, revive, and thrive during these tumultuous times. The champions of re-invention across media platforms turn out to be sports journalists of the old school...

25 Non-Random Things About Writing Short

Posted on February 10, 2009
RELATED 25 Random Things About 25 Random Things on FacebookStart with a viral Internet craze. Throw in bits and pieces of confession and voyeurism, raw honesty and self-serving puffery. Add a dash of random beauty and musings on our digital identities...

How to Cover the Super Bowl and Why

Posted on January 25, 2009
RELATEDJoin a live chat about Super Bowl coverage on Tuesday, Jan. 27 at 2 p.m. EST with Roy Peter Clark and Dave Kindred, Buddy Martin, Jemele Hill. Scroll to the chat window below and set a reminder for Jan. 27 at 2 p.m. then come back and join the conversation...

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