Ben Yagoda's How to Not Write Bad uses this basic tenet—what Ben calls "not-writing-badly"—to illustrate how we can all write better, clearer and for a wider readership.
Ben offers advice on crafting sentences that are correct in terms of spelling, diction, punctuation, and grammar and that display clarity, precision, and grace, as well as on the art of constructing whole paragraphs-- focusing on cadence, consistency of tone, word repetition, sentence transitions, and length.
Join Ben Yagoda and an exemplar of, "not-writing-badly," "On The Media's" Brooke Gladstone, as they discuss everything from how to do it to those who excel at it. Audience Q&A and book sale and signing to follow.
Brief Bios
Ben Yagoda teaches English, journalism and writing at the University of Delaware and is the author, co-author or editor of nine books. He has written about language, writing and other topics for Slate, The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times Magazine, The American Scholar, Rolling Stone, Esquire and many other publications. He contributes to "Lingua Franca," a Chronicle of Higher Education blog about language and writing and "Draft," a New York Times blog about the art of writing. His personal blog is "Not One-Off Britishisms."
Brooke Gladstone, managing editor and co-host of On the Media," has a long history with public radio. After working in print media, she joined NPR in 1987 as senior editor of "Weekend Edition" with Scott Simon and became senior editor of "All Things Considered" in 1989. In 1991, she spent a year at Stanford University as a Knight Fellow and then reported for NPR from Moscow during Boris Yeltsin's turbulent presidency. After that, Gladstone served for six years as NPR's first media correspondent and then joined "On the Media" when it relaunched in January, 2001. Gladstone is the recipient of two Peabody Awards, a National Press Club Award, an Overseas Press Club Award and several others.
She also is the author of The Influencing Machine, a media manifesto in graphic form, listed among the year's top books by The New Yorker, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal and among the "10 Masterpieces of Graphic Nonfiction" by The Atlantic.