Monthly Archives: October 2008

Nocera's Nuggets: A primer on reporting.

Joe Nocera, the Times’ business columnist, Tuesday presented a primer on reporting to Tim Harper’s Craft Class. The veteran business writer and columnist has covered everyone from Boone Pickens (from his Texas oil-patch days) to Steve Jobs (who called Nocera … Continue reading

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Keep it simple and strong.

We’re not against long sentences here but too often writers lose their way and don’t understand the story they’re trying to tell the reader, if you get what I mean, hopefully, as scribes pile on the clauses, modifiers, punctuation and … Continue reading

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The Wrong Stuff Bad Writing Contest!

We like to celebrate good writing and reporting in this space.  But there’s much to learn, too, from bad writing.  Many of you probably are aware of the annual Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest, which parodies  the 19th century English novelist … Continue reading

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David Foster Wallace (R.I.P.) and you.

When the news broke a month ago about David Foster Wallace’s suicide, I realized I didn’t know his work except for a riveting essay on tennis great Roger Federer.  Since then, I’ve read countless appreciations of Wallace, who  taught creative … Continue reading

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Make Jimmy Breslin proud.

The simple period is one of the most powerful weapons in a writer’s arsenal.  Too often, we see run-on sentences that never end.  Writers tend  to just keep adding commas and dashes and semi-colons, almost anything to keep  the sentence … Continue reading

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The details of good writing.

We constantly stress the need to capture as much telling detail as possible in your reporting.  The more specific the details, the better your writing will be, transporting your reader inside the scene or action.  Mathew Warren did that splendidly … Continue reading

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