Greg Landretti asks:
How about “inhibit” versus “prohibit”?
The first definition of inhibit in the OED gives “prohibit” as a synonym:
inhibit: trans. To forbid, prohibit, interdict (a person)
Several of the illustrations show inhibit being used where a modern writer would probably use prohibit....
tips menulis: Is "into" after "invade" really necessary?
My ears pricked up when I heard the local weatherman say that rain was expected to “invade into the River Valley.” Why, I wondered, hadn’t he said that rain was expected to “invade the River Valley? The verb invade includes the sense of “into.”
invade: transitive verb. to enter in a hostile manner,...
Tips menulis Novel: What's yout Novel's Log Line
The term log line (also spelled log-line and logline) is usually associated with movies, but the wise novelist will learn how to write one. In the context of writing (as opposed to measuring a ship’s rate of speed), a log line is the succinct summary of a story. According to the Wikipedia article,...
Word Count and Book Length
A novelist of my acquaintance insists that the only way to estimate the number of words in a book is to multiply the number of pages by 250. That was the formula in the good old days when Courier was the only typeface and typewriters were King. Now we have computers and word processing software. It’s...
Emblezzlement, Peculation, and Connotation
In a previous DWT post, Michael argues that there’s no such thing as a true synonym because a word’s connotation always colors its denotation.
Commenting on the article, a reader refuted Michael’s argument with the words peculation and embezzlement:
I
have found one [an exception], and...
Explaining the Explanation Regarding "THAN HE"
My post about the use of than as a preposition left a reader wondering about some of the grammatical terms used in the explanation:
I’m…a bit unsure about the terms ‘demonstrative pronoun’, ‘conjunction’ and ‘preposition’ in this context. Could you please explain this a little more?
The terms being...
Tips Menulis: Taller Than He
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