The writer Stephen King pushes people who want to write well to "read, read, read." Reading a wide variety of writing can feel like riding waves of language: words, sentences, paragraphs — all of ...

Nothing brings me more existential pain than hearing from former students of tyrannical English teachers, the ones who seem to think that knowing how to diagram a sentence is more important than ...

SPARE ME: For nine years, I had the dubious good fortune to attend Catholic school. There, I learned how to diagram a sentence, how to absorb punishment, and how to run like crazy from arguments ...