A writing tip

Robert Caro says he always starts at the end of the book. He explained this to the New York Review of Books in a recent interview:

Before I start a book, I must know the last line. If I can’t, I can’t do the book. Once I have it, I’ll write toward that last line.
Do you have a closing line for the last volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson?
Yes. Yes.

Writing help

• Bill Safire's Fumblerules and On Language Columns 
• EVIATAR ZERUBAVEL The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
• Rutgers'  Plangere Writing Center
• Rutgers' Writing Program - Cook-Douglass Center
• Strunk and White 

More writing tips

Writing tips, this time from McSweeney's.  Be careful, because as they explain..."A writer’s brain is full of little gifts, like a piñata at a birthday party. It’s also full of demons, like a piñata at a birthday party in a mental hospital."

Punctuation matters

For our grad students who are beginning to launch into some more serious writing, I offer this recent NY Times column by Ben Yagoda, The Most Comma Mistakes. You might also enjoy his Fanfare for the Comma Man. He does a great job illustrating how punctuation matters, with examples like this:

"a Federal District Court ruling invalidating the District of Columbia’s gun ban (subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court) held that “the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one ‘prefatory’ and the other ‘operative.’"

Be careful.