Authors Electric

  I'd have had a different headline--one loved by my friend Stupid--if I'd placed a comma after the word 'friend'. But Savvy, my other friend, came to the rescue. The two are seldom far apart. Savvy has his moments and has served me well through the years.  A few of Savvy's strengths and achievements: --A small rainbow of belts in martial arts, Hapkido and Aikido, before my back retired me, gave me physical confidence and serve as a motherlode for fight scenes in my books. --Street smarts acquired through life in a half-dozen big cities and retail acquaintance with scoundrels and thieves of all sorts. --Copywriting and journalistic experience --Stoker Award for best first novel. --Moving experience gained from a half-dozen cross-country moves. --Writing, proofreading, and editing experience gained from a dozen published novels and an advertising background --From my classical studies, a passion for complex structure, brevity, and word play. --From my close study of ...

I would be very surprised if anybody who writes or reads these blogs would consider that what children under eleven are in future expected to know about language is anything but a disastrous misunderstanding of the true nature of both language and learning. Let's take at random one of the fantastic assertions the onlie begetters of the futile new tests peddle as stone tablets. What are the situations in which you can use the the humble exclamation mark? It would appear that children need to know that one of the very few places in which it can be used without fuelling the experts' anger is when the sentence begins with 'How' or 'What' . Actually, as the last sentence but one above begins with 'What', there's a good case to make that I should have used one instead of a question mark. On reading the paragraph over, it occurs to me that I've said something serially stupid.  'What? Can he be serious about that?'   I hear you cry? S...