J.R.

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"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so." (Sherlock Holmes)

I enjoy embedding puns and subtle self-references into many of my answers and comments.

This question inspired me to create this web page.

	634 reputation	bio	website		visits	member for	1 year, 3 months
16 badges		location	United States		seen	Apr 16 at 22:20

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Mar 16	comment	Best way to emphasise the greenness of the fields in spring in comparison with summer Or, dried out? I think it depends on why the grass loses its luster. The harsh heat? Trodden over by foot? If we don't understand why, it's hard to answer this question, be it from the writer's perspective, or the English perspective (the latter being a request for an idiom).
Feb 23	awarded	Yearling
Feb 16	comment	Is it true that men (in general) can't write female first-person? I'd probably change "cannot" to "do not" (or maybe even "prefer not to") – that might be more accurate. No matter how it's worded, though, the "in general" is vital: it acknowledges there may be exceptions to the assertion. It's also worth noting that this was apparently part of a set of conclusions drawn from an 8-person literary circle, not a comprehensive study. Still, if we put all the first-person books written by men onto a balance, sorted by whether the main character is male or female, I'm pretty sure I know which way the scales would tip, so the notion isn't utterly preposterous.
Jan 8	comment	Unsure of how to interpret this prompt tofu: I believe @SF means that whoever evaluates your essay is likely to be much less interested in which side you take than in how well you support your position logically.
Jan 8	comment	How many different words are in the average novel? I'm curious: did you get this data from somewhere?
Jan 8	answered	Unsure of how to interpret this prompt
Jan 8	comment	How about a story as a series of anecdotes? It seems like a lot of books follow this format. (The Five People You Meet in Heaven was the first that popped into my mind.)
Dec 28	comment	alternatives to “he said” in dialog Good general answer, although I don't think opined is particularly good in that example. Perhaps "I've found an important clue!" Bob exclaimed, or, "On the contrary, I think this clue is very important," Bob opined. (But that might just be the way I'm imagining it without additional context.)
Dec 28	revised	Is it okay to call the reader's target audience stupid? removed erroneous apostrophe
Dec 25	revised	Effective ways to enrich your active vocabulary? added missing preposition
Dec 1	revised	Is it good style in fiction to write sentences as a flow of (disjointed) thoughts? "code text" with scroll bar to quote box - then "a" to "another" just to get the edit to 6 non-space characters
Dec 1	suggested	suggested edit on Is it good style in fiction to write sentences as a flow of (disjointed) thoughts?
Nov 26	answered	Effective ways to enrich your active vocabulary?
Nov 26	comment	How many errors should I expect from a proofreader? No way to tell from the information given. You should at least reveal how many errors the proofreader found. If she missed ten but found a thousand, I'd say that's pretty good work. If she missed ten and only found twenty, I'd find that rather slipshod.
Nov 22	answered	Headline method - How do I write The Economist-style headlines?
Nov 22	comment	Headline method - How do I write The Economist-style headlines? After doing the search you recommended, I find myself wondering: do you mean headlines, or tag lines?
Nov 21	awarded	Citizen Patrol
Nov 12	answered	Is the opening of this detective short story gripping enough to read on? Can it be shortened?
Nov 9	comment	Does this opening paragraph grab your attention? (very normal setting) The new version seems much improved. I'd change "he didn't know what he was supposed to buy" to "he couldn't remember what he was supposed to buy." The sentence before that should be trimmed, too: "That's why he was standing in the busy convenience store." (No need to say the verbose "That had been the reason he had gone out, and entered" – that's all implied by the fact that he's standing there). One more suggestion: I'd change the first preposition from "at" to "inside". Otherwise, the wording can create the impression that Jun is outside, on the sidewalk next to the parking lot.
Nov 8	comment	Does this opening paragraph grab your attention? (very normal setting) alex: I wondered about that when I made that comment – maybe that's different in different country. I appreciate learning that. Still, it might be worth noting that an American reader, at least, would find that very strange indeed.