§ Writing Cheat Sheet

§ Books about charming sentences and how to construct them

§ Active v/s passive vocabulary

• passive vocabulary: Words one knows and can understand from context.
• active vocabulary: Words one uses actively while speaking.

The key to good writing for those who read a lot is to expand their active vocabulary to match their passive vocabulary.

• A useful exercise is to look for synonyms during speech; This way, one forces an enlargening of active vocabulary.

• Moulding one's inner mologoue to reach the ideal 'Voice' might also be benificial; However, there is a tendency that speech is not the same as writing --- very few people speak as they write. I wish to write like my idol (David Foster Wallace), who does speak like he writes. I surmise it's worthwhile to mould my inner speech to align with how my writing is supposed to be.

§ Punctuation

Should one use punctuation, or shoud not? How much should one use punctuation? What range of punctuation should one use --- from the common , and ., all the way up to :, ;, and ---.
There appear to be three distinct schools of thought.

• The first school of thought is prescriptive; They hold the belief that one must use as much punctuation as is necessary to accurately transcribe cadence.

• The second school are the moderates. Too much of punctuation can leave writing stilted, or worse, give it an appearance of putting on a veneer of respectability. Use as much punctation as is necessary, they say.

• The third school of thought is anarchic and recommend no punctuation at all except for . as this is a terrific way to get a sense for how to place words as one is forced to switch up vocabulary based on the cadence one wishes for instead of relying on artificial markers afforded by our system of writing.

§ English grammar

• english club
• ginger software: grammar rules
• Literary devices

I couldn't really find a good "grammar book", so I decided to simply poll friends every time I came across a word that I didn't know. Assumes knowledge of noun, pronoun, verb, adjective.

§ Pronoun resolution

• cataphora: later reference, anaphora: past reference?

The connection between this and catamorphism/ anamorphism is something I wish to explore.

• let ([x 5]) (+ x 3)): x is anaphora resolution.