JSBձոգչ

4,612 reputation

1031

bio	website	jsbangs.com
	location	United States
	age	31
visits	member for	2 years, 6 months
	seen	May 15 at 19:01
stats	profile views	54

I have a degree in Linguistics, but I work as a programmer. Most of my expertise about English is self-taught, plus lots of random trivia I've acquired here and there.

This is my favorite EL&U comment ever:

This isn't really a question about English so much as a question about hugs. Source

	4,612 reputation	bio	website	jsbangs.com	visits	member for	2 years, 6 months
1031 badges		location	United States		seen	May 15 at 19:01

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Jan 24	answered	How can I transition from academic writing to fiction writing?
Jan 21	answered	Does my first paragraph grab your attention?
Jan 19	comment	How many queries do you send to editors a week? Is this about fiction or non-fiction? The answers for each will differ quite a bit.
Jan 15	comment	What are the advantages of incorporation for a writer? Very interesting comments about insurance.
Jan 14	awarded	Nice Answer
Jan 13	comment	Is it worth switching to Dvorak? I use Dvorak, and what you describe was exactly my experience. And I've gotten very used to just writing in Dvorak on a Qwerty keyboard, though it occasionally freaks my coworkers out.
Jan 11	answered	If you get an advance do you ever have to give it back?
Jan 9	comment	Do most novels not get published? There is clearly a very large element of chance in the publication of any particular novel. Once you've written a professional-quality novel, if you're a new author you still have a 90% chance of getting rejected, and getting into that other 10% is largely a matter of luck. We agree on this. However, the point I tried to make in my answer is that if you just keep writing, you'll eventually write something that hits the right place at the right time. Persistence wins out over probability.
Jan 8	comment	Do most novels not get published? On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile is interesting but too pessimistic. He tries to argue from the fact that there is some element of chance in getting published to the conclusion that getting published is all chance.
Jan 7	answered	Do most novels not get published?
Jan 7	answered	Do multimedia-objects work well in electronical publishings of fictional writing?
Jan 7	answered	How much should I describe things or persons, that are not important for the story?
Jan 7	comment	How much should I describe things or persons, that are not important for the story? The maxim "Omit Needless Words" usually refers to your prose, not to the description itself.
Jan 5	comment	Writers Communities? AbsoluteWrite is an excellent resource.
Jan 4	comment	Writing 19th century upperclass English dialog Also, not to be a nag, but Austen is from the tail end of the 18th century, and her dialog is pretty different from what I think of as typical 19th century dialogue, as found in e.g. Dickens or Oscar Wilde.
Jan 4	comment	Writing 19th century upperclass English dialog @Joel, because writing critiques are explicitly off-topic on this site.
Dec 27	comment	How do you map out your storyline? @bobo, I pretty much made it up myself, although I was inspired by similar systems I had seen several other people use.
Dec 24	comment	What are some examples of modern original plots? @jae, who says there are only 12 notes? Many non-Western music theories use more or less than 12 notes.
Dec 21	answered	How many liberties can one take with syntax and grammar rules when writing poetry?
Dec 21	comment	What are good places to post your work where it will be read by others? @Ralph, that depends on where you post it. Forums that are password-protected and require registration (such as the OWW and Critters) are generally not regarded as exhausting your electronic rights, especially since the owners of those sites explicitly disavow any rights claims.