6 Grammatically Questionable Epitaphs

Gravestones are meant to live on long after the person they represent has passed. It’s important to make sure they’re both well-deserved celebrations of life and completely accurate, since correcting these stones can be an arduous and expensive process. In honor of “Plan Your Epitaph Day,” which took place yesterday, here are six famous examples of epitaphs with grave spelling or grammatical errors.

5 Ways To Write Better Poems

Poetry is a strange medium. It’s both heavily critiqued and profoundly subjective. A poem can be as timeless as the best classical literature or it might only ever move one reader. When a format is so artistic and personal, it seems absurd to impose rules or suggest ways in which one poem is objectively better than another. Nonetheless, there are certain ways in which a poet can make her own work the best it can be, regardless of how it compares to the mainstream.

For Team Members at Automated Proofreading Company, Email Presents a Major Challenge*

San Francisco, Calif. — Most consumer Internet startups focus on gaining funding, accessing top talent, or providing Google-esque perks, but a Bay Area automated proofreading company is navigating a different set of issues.

“I am terrified to send emails,” said a team member at Grammarly.com. “Because I work with a company dedicated to improving written communication, all of my email is subject to intense scrutiny.

Happily Ever After, or Not: The Influence of Mother Goose

May 1 is Mother Goose Day, established in 1987 by Gloria T. Delamar upon the publication of her book, Mother Goose; From Nursery to Literature.

The day is a time for reflecting on fairy tales, acting them out, making and wearing Mother Goose costumes, or reading fairy tales aloud. It also could be a time to consider how much these stories have influenced modern writing. Of course, this includes works such as Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series, based on L.

7 Irish Proverbs Adopted Into Pop Culture

When Saint Patrick’s Day rolls around, everyone embraces a little Irish spirit. Sporting shamrocks and shillelaghs and wearing a bit o’ green, friends come together to celebrate this most Celtic tradition — and no one celebrates like the Irish!

Given the enthusiasm with which America endorses this holiday, perhaps it’s no surprise that Irish culture has blended so happily with American pop culture.

Writing in the Voice of Me

Guest post from Tilia Klebenov Jacobs 

“My book is about, um, me.  Is that okay?”

This is the question I get most often when I teach novel-writing classes.  And I say go for it, because every novelist is a memoirist and every memoirist is a novelist.  Even the most earnest nonfiction writer must of necessity apply a little fiction here and there, if only because she probably wasn’t taking notes on that watershed conversation thirty years ago.  By contrast, the novelist can create a completely fictional character, but as often as not writes about himself.  Far from being a cop-out, this can add richness to one’s prose.

Confusing Words: Versus vs. Verses

Versus:

meaning against (especially in sports and legal use); as opposed to, in contrast to. (Often abbreviated as vs.) For example:

The rivalry of the Green Monkeys versus the Blue Barracudas has raged for years.

I’m weighing the pros and cons of the white-and-gold dress versus the blue-and-black dress.

Verses:

meaning a kind of writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme; small sections of the Jewish or Christian Bible; several similar units of a song.