Archive for category Writing well

I write like…

Jul 19

Posted by Tony Burton in Humor, Writing well | No Comments

Well, maybe I shouldn’t leave that all open-ended like that.  Some who don’t like my  work might choose to fill in the blank with their own idea of an appropriate noun or adjective.

But there really is a very interesting website that Radine Trees Nehring pointed out to me today.  It’s called “I Write Like”, and found at http://iwl.me/

The premise is that every writer has certain patterns they tend to follow: sentence length, number of adjectives, verbs, nouns, etc., in a sentence, how much dialogue, how choppy or protracted the dialogue is, etc.  At this site you put in a fairly large representative sample of your writing, and it compares it to a database of famous writers’ writing.  Then, it tells you who you write like!

I was excited and pleased to see that my prose is similar to Raymond Chandler’s! (I can only hope that it does NOT mean that I write like a dead guy.)

Why not drop by there, put some of your prose into the system, and see what it tells you?

I write like
Raymond Chandler

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Literary Porn Drawing Winner

May 30

Posted by Tony Burton in Humor, Writing well | 3 Comments

Well, the time is up and, even though I didn’t get as many entrants into the “Write Your Own Literary Porn” contest as I would have liked, I did get a fewparticipants.  (I think a lot of people were chicken!)

The randomly drawn winner is… Barb Goffman.  Here is her entry:

“My breath quickened. It was nearly time. Our weekly rendezvous. In moments we’d be together, and I’d melt into the pleasure, tuning out everything else. Sometimes I wish we had more time together, more time to for me to explore. But a part of me relished our limitations. They made every moment more precious. One day soon, we’ll have to part, but not now. Not today. Now I turn on my TV, ‘Lost’ comes on, and I sigh in ecstasy.”

Sadly, her true love is now a thing of the past, only memories now, but she does receive a nice, crisp copy of The Writer’s Journey Journal, as promised.

Congratulations, Barb!

Literary Porn

May 17

Posted by Tony Burton in The business of writing, Writing ideas from life, Writing well | 19 Comments

No, NO!  It’s not what you think!  I’m not talking about Hemingway writing about a three-way, or Michener writing… well, never mind what Michener might write.  The mind boggles.

What I’m talking about is a topic that arose recently on the Dorothy-L listserv, the idea that some people write about particular topics with such passion and descriptive phrases that show a love… nay, a lust for a particular pastime or object.  We’re talking about things like car porn, gun porn, airplane porn, food porn, desert racing porn, tool porn and even debt porn.  (I have to admit that last one is beyond me….)

One Dorothy-L subscriber mentioned that an article in Washington Monthly said this about Tom Clancy: “Tom Clancy may not be able to write a good love scene between a man and a woman, but he can certainly write a good love scene between a man and a weapons system.”

But, I confess: when someone complained that a few people had labeled his choices of crime fiction as spy porn and he felt aggrieved about that, I was the one who suggested that the people who made that observation were not talking about sex in the traditional sense, but rather that the books he liked glorified the action and technique of spying, revelled in it, got into the depths of it and rolled around in the clandestine nature of it in fits of ecstasy.  (Well, maybe I didn’t say it quite that way, but that’s what I meant.)  The television show “24″ is a great example of spy porn.

So, in defense of those who may attach a label of “___________ porn” to any form of literature, I offered my own off-the-cuff version of a short passage of literary knife porn.  For your reading enjoyment, here it is.  (Oh, and unless you are in a strangely controlling work environment, it is Safe For Work.)

“Ronnie held the sleek Gerber Mark II in his hand, feeling the hilt warm to his touch. As he turned it, light from the street lamp outside the window glinted on the blade and seemed to travel along the polished, razor-sharp edge, at last flashing at the needle-like point like a star breaking through the firmament. He smiled and nodded.  This was the one.  He took up the sheath and slid the weapon into it, his lips slightly parted as the steel slipped home between the snugly caressing folds of leather. He pulled on his jacket, covering the sheath hanging beneath his arm and embraced it to him as a lover. No one else would know it was there… but he would. He could feel it.”

A few people wrote me off-list and told me they really liked it, and a couple said they felt strangely excited by reading it.  I made a mental note of those folks and decided not to ever turn my back on them when there were sharp objects lying around.  (I don’t have a Gerber Mark II, but I have held one before and they are very nice blades.  I have a few knives, though, and probably the scariest one is my latest acquisition, a SOG SEAL Team knife, once called the SOG SEAL Knife 2000.)

Here’s what I’d love: If you are a writer, pick some subject or object you are really passionate about, and write a short “porn” piece about it—maybe 50 to 75 words—and post it here as a comment.  Remember, this is NOT real porn, so descriptions of personal plumbing or reproductive/pleasuring are NOT what I’m interested in.  I want to see how you can turn your hand to writing a short scene that evokes a feeling of passion… focus… perhaps even an obsession about an object or activity.  See if you can make the readers here start to fan themselves.

If you are NOT a writer, I’ll bet you have read a piece somewhere that is a porn piece.  Maybe it’s someone waxing rhapsodic about a particular car, or drooling over a certain computer.  Show us that piece, either by typing it into the comment area, C&P’ing it in, or giving us a link to it.

Come on people, show us just how much verbal sensuality you can dredge up!  And I make this offer: I will send a copy of The Writer’s Journey Journal to one of those who submits a sample of his or her own personal literary porn, chosen by a random drawing from among the names of those who submit samples.  I will draw from among those names next week, and announce the winner here.

As someone once said, “Let the bloodbath begin….”

Copyright 2010  Tony Burton

Writerly Resources Take 3

Apr 17

Posted by Tony Burton in The business of writing, Writing well | 11 Comments

As a writer, sometimes we need to have special resources that are OUTSIDE what we might think of as writing resources.  After all, whether we like it or not, each writer is also a businessperson.  We produce a product (composed words) to a standard (sometimes our own, sometimes our editors) and we attempt to get consumers (readers) to use our product.

So, here are a couple of business items that are free or very, very cheap, that could come in very handy to the author on a budget, along with what I think are great information resources for crime writers.

Free incoming fax lines.

Often I’m asked if I can take a fax, whether it’s a contract, a set of specifications, or whatever.  Yeah, I know, it’s the age of email, but there are lots of places where they have standard forms in hardcopy and they simply are not going to go to the trouble of retyping the document to send it to you as an email attachment.  Some people are afraid that you might manage somehow to change the original if it is a word processing document. For whatever reason, it’s nice to be able to say, “Sure, here’s my fax number!  Just send it along.”

Online fax services are very, very useful. The fax is sent to a number provided by the company, and when a fax arrives, you get an email. In the email, there is a link to view the fax and print it if you wish.  The faxes are archived there for a period of time, too.  You don’t require a second line or a fax machine… unless you’d like to send faxes as well.  Of course, these services also offer paid options where you can send faxes, especially useful if you already have a scanner attached to your computer. Here are a couple of online providers of incoming fax numbers, that don’t cost anything.

Accepting credit cards at book events.

Many (if not most) of the time at book signing events there is someone who handles much of the book sales, collects money, etc.  This is especially true if you are the type of author who does these events primarily at bookstores or organized conventions.  But many authors, myself included, have discovered that there are sales to be made at less bookseller-oriented events: craft fairs, smaller conventions or conferences, street fairs, etc.  At many of these locations, you don’t have a central purchase point.  Now, for a long time I gladly accepted only checks and cash.  But at the last three events where I sold and there was no bookseller present to handle sales, I lost quite a few sales because I was unable to take credit cards on the spot!  This is not only bad business, it disappoints potential readers.

My wife is one of those people who only carries cash when I browbeat her into doing so.  She pays for everything with a credit card, and we pay off the bill in toto each month.  (She also uses the collected card points to buy birthday gifts and anniversary gifts, to the point where she seldom actually spends money on anything like that!)  The reason I want her to carry cash is for those out-in-the-boonies places where you may need ten or twenty dollars, and nobody takes Discover.

I grew tired of losing sales, but it was frustrating to go to my bank and be told that I would be charged upwards of $400 per year to process credit cards, whether I needed to do so or not, and they would also take about 3.5% of each sale.  And, if I wanted to process them on the spot, I’d have to buy a special (translation: EXPENSIVE) device and pay an extra monthly fee.  Hey, I’m a poor author here!

Finally, though, I found a great place that offers a very affordable plan, and allows me to process my sales either when I get home (from my computer) or even from my cell phone, on the spot!  Their basic plan is $35 per YEAR, and allows processing of Visa and MasterCard payments from your computer, via the Internet.  The next step up is $60 per year, and allows you also to accept Discover and American Express, and to process payments on a phone (cellular or landline) without any special equipment.  That’s a heck of a big savings for me over $400 per year, plus the cost of the special wireless device and the extra wireless processing fees.  The service is called ProPay, and is located at https://epay.propay.com/ I know, it’s not FREE, but it’s quite a bit cheaper than any other service I have checked out, including PayPal and my own banks.

Gun and ammunition information.

It always amazes me how many crime writers (fiction and nonfiction alike) are absolutely clueless about the device most often used in the stories they write: The Gun.  I read where someone “clicks off the safety on his revolver” and I go into spasms.  I see where the perpetrator used a “12-gauge rifle” and shudder.  People, people, people!  You wouldn’t write a story about a race car driver and rhapsodize about how the driver “dropped the transmission into 4th gear and peeled off from the starting line,” so why be inaccurate in use of guns in your stories?  It is sloppy, it is unprofessional, and it really bothers those of us who are anal-retentive gun information freaks.  Here are some online sources of information that will help you to look really knowledgeable and keep you from kicking the in-the-know readers out of your story in dismay.  (And the information is FREE.)

  • The Gun Zone  http://www.thegunzone.com/
  • Genitron  http://www.genitron.com/
  • About.com Guns and Shooting Forum  http://hunting.about.com/od/guns/Guns_and_Shooting.htm
  • Carry Concealed  http://www.carryconcealed.net/


    • Stay tuned–there are more Writerly Resources coming your way!

    And let me know if these have been helpful to you.  I love to read comments from my readers!

    Oy, what a character!

    Mar 26

    Posted by Tony Burton in Writing well | No Comments

    Character Development. That’s the thing that your parents said came from disciplining yourself to pick up your room and work an after-school job, or the thing that your coach said came from sweating your butt off during pre-season workouts.

    But it’s also an important part of writing an interesting story, whether short or long.

    It’s important that your characters be engaging, but characters for different types of stories usually have different characteristics.  A literary novel, for example, usually is focused on the development of the characters as they interact with each other and the environment of the story, and ultimately shows that the protagonist (at least) has grown and become a different person during the course of the novel.  At the outset we may love the protagonist, we may loathe him/her, or we may have some feeling along the continuum between these two extremes.  What is important is the interaction of the characters and how they change during the story.  I understand this, and don’t mind it a bit.  Kafka’s Gregor Samsa or Twain’s Huckleberry Finn are excellent examples.

    In a crime novel, on the other hand, most readers will say that they want a protagonist that they can relate to, identify with, or perhaps fantasize about being.  (I’ve heard a couple of female readers simply say they fantasize about being WITH Jack Reacher, but that’s a different thing!)  Sure, there may be some growth and maturing of the character during the novel, but that’s not the focus of a crime novel.  The focus is on solving the mystery, or stopping the villain, so that “good” ultimately triumphs.  Is “good” always GOOD?  Maybe not, but it’s all relative.  (Moral relativism is a large part of crime fiction, else we would not condone Sherlock Holmes asking Dr. Watson to help him break into Charles Augustus Milverton’s home to steal incriminating blackmail letters.)

    Of course, we don’t want a two-dimensional character in any sort of story.  (Leaving aside the wonderful novel Flatland by Abbott.)  A flat protagonist make it difficult for the reader to connect with that character, and thus the reader is always kept on the fringes of the story instead of being an integral part of it.

    The best stories I have read have not been those with the most beautiful passages of description or the most poetic combinations of words, but those where I connected with the main character—where I cared what happened to that character, where I was tense when there was danger, where I laughed when he said something funny, or cried when she was sad.  If the character cannot make me feel emotions based on what he or she is going through, there is something wrong.

    I know that genre fiction is supposed to be plot-driven more than character-driven, but there needs to be a blend of both for the story to have wide appeal.  Sure, a book that has pencil-sketched characters and is primarily action and events occurring, with characters reacting to the events in a wild drive to survive, will have fans.  But it will not have the kind of impact that the same story would have if the characters are empathetic and “real” in their development and portrayal.   Tell me which of the following would have the most emotional impact on you:

    • A young woman’s body is found in an alley, with no identification.
    • A young single mother’s body is found in an alley, with a bag of broken baby food jars beside her and a baby rattle, still in the package, clutched in her hand.

    Or, here:

    • He screamed at the man in the chair, “I can’t stand it any more.  I’m leaving!”
    • Watson screamed at Holmes, sitting there calmly smoking his pipe, “I can’t stand it any more!  I’m leaving!”

    In the first one, I have no doubt you felt a more immediate connection with the dead young single mother as a victim, than you did with the stranger.  And in the second case, you probably would be more drawn to find out what is going on with Watson and Holmes, than with some unknown persons with no history or character depth.  Sure, I hijacked some characters from A.C. Doyle, but the point is that having a well-developed character creates more reader interest with anything that happens in the story.

    If you are primarily a reader, what do you look for in the protagonist of your favorite type of literature?

    If you are a writer, what do you do to make your characters fully-fleshed and interesting?

    Inquiring minds want to know!

    Writerly Resources, Take 2

    Mar 13

    Posted by Tony Burton in Writing well | 3 Comments

    Here are a couple more things that may be of assistance to the budding… or experienced… writer of tantalizing tales.

    Statistics. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) once quoted Benjamin Disraeli as saying, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” Even if that is true, sometimes a handy statistic can help prove a point, or establish a plot point, or make a character sound knowledgeable.  Here is a site that is (more or less) a clearinghouse of statistical resources: http://www.robertniles.com/data/

    yWriter.  If you’re one of those writers who may occasionally need help keeping scenes, chapters, and so forth sorted out (and, really which of us doesn’t??), you might want to give yWriter a look-see.  It is a freeware program written for Windows, designed specifically with writing novels in mind.  As it is FREE, it might not hurt to download it and check it out.  It may not help you, but then again, it may be just what you are looking for to get that monster of an unfinished novel under control. http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html

    CIA World Factbook. Need information to build the backstory for that rogue who is ripping off your character’s jewelry?  Need to know that Mexico is actually a larger country, in square kilometers, than Mongolia?  Want to know what the flag, currency and major products of export are for Bangladesh?  All this sort of information, and much more, can be found at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html (This assumes, of course, that you trust the Central Intelligence Agency.)

    Tags: , ,

    Writerly Resources, Take #1

    Feb 27

    Posted by Tony Burton in Language, Writing well | 4 Comments

    As both a writer and a publisher, I know that sometimes we get stuck in one way or another.  Maybe we need something to inspire us, maybe we need a bit of information that is hard to find, maybe we are trying to establish our character’s place in history… in short, we need help.

    So I have decided to share with you some of the things that help me when I need it.  You can call them resources, or tools, or lifelines, or whatever you like.  I won’t put them all in here at one time, but rather I’ll tantalize you with two or three in each entry in an effort to draw you back to my blog.  (Hey, at least I’m honest about it!)

    Resource #1: Our Timelines.  Sometimes it is really helpful to get a handle on what was going on in the world at a particular point in your protagonist’s life.  This is especially true if you write historical fiction.  One really helpful resource I found is called Our Timelines.  Our Timelines allows you to enter both the birthdate and death date (if needed) of your character, all the way back to 1,000 CE, and it then will create a timeline with major events for each year in that character’s life.  Now, I’m not saying it lists EVERYTHING that happens every year, but it’s a great start, and a super resource to use when you’re trying to establish the technological or political frame of reference for a particular time in history.

    Resource #2: Twists, Slugs and Roscoes-A Dictionary of Hardboiled Slang.  From the site: “If you’ve ever read a hardboiled detective story, you may have come across a sentence like,

    “I jammed the roscoe in his button and said, ‘Close your yap, bo, or I squirt metal.’”

    Something like that isn’t too hard to decipher. But what if you encounter,

    “The flim-flammer jumped in the flivver and faded.”

    “You dumb mug, get your mitts off the marbles before I stuff that mud-pipe down your mush–and tell your moll to hand over the mazuma.”

    “The sucker with the schnozzle poured a slug but before he could scram out two shamuses showed him the shiv and said they could send him over.”

    Exactly. Sometimes it’s hard to decode the slang of a past generation… or for that matter of the present generation, but that’s a different story.  If you want your hardboiled dicks, shamuses, and peepers to talk like wise heads, here’s your connection. Go here for the straight dope.

    Resource #3: Guide to Grammar and Writing.  No matter how well we may think we write, or how strong a grip we may think we have on the English language, sometimes anyone can make a grammar mistake. It’s not always easy to get things right when you write. So, to help with those little things like grammar, usage, and composition, check out the Guide to Grammar and Writing at Capital Community College.

    That’s enough for the moment.  I hope these are helpful for you, but if they aren’t, or if they are and you’d like to see more, drop around again soon.

    Lower Standards for Children’s Literature? I Don’t Think So!

    Feb 6

    Posted by Tony Burton in Publishing, Writing well | 14 Comments

    Recently I was asked to take on an editing job, freelance, for a children’s book.  I had no problem with it being a children’s book–I think kids’ books are great things, and the more of them children have, the better off they are!  Now, this particular job was not a high-paying one, but supposedly a simple moderate-level editing job, comprising both copyediting and some minor corrections of grammar, usage, etc, of a mix of short poems and very short stories.  No sweat.

    However, once I received the manuscript and spent some time with it, I understood why the two previous editors who had this particular gig had dropped it.  (Gee, why didn’t I consider this before?!)  The writing was poor, the poetry was inconsistent, the stories tended to wander all over the landscape and most of the time ended up far from any particular denouement.

    This was not an editing job.  This was a rewriting job, at the very least.  I emailed the person who had commissioned me for the job (luckily, she was not the author) and informed her of my issues with the manuscript.  It would, I told her, take much more than moderate editing.  It would require substantive editing and rewriting, and would involve much more time than she was willing to pay me to do.  I gave her my feedback on the quality of the writing, and told her that I honestly didn’t think she would be able to find anyone competent to do the job for the amount she was budgeted to pay.  The person who commissioned me owns a pay-to-publish company, by the way, and this book was never intended for the open market—only for the author’s grandchildren.  I can understand having a book published for your grandchildren, something to leave behind.  Still….

    The publisher was not happy with me, perhaps understandably, but here are a couple of comments that threw me for a loop:  “I disagree with your description of  [AUTHOR'S] work. I don’t think it’s as bad as you describe. These are stories for children, not adults, and that makes a big difference in what is acceptable.”

    I’m sorry, but that is wrong, wrong, WRONG.

    Maybe this author didn’t intend to have the book published in order to get it onto the shelves of Barnes & Noble, but that doesn’t mean that kids’ literature should have lower standards for grammar, usage, quality of story, logic, and construction.  Children deserve to have well-written books just as much as adults do.  Why would anyone think otherwise?  The words read by kids, the stories and poems consumed by their minds, help to form their concepts of reality and how to deal with the world around them—especially when these words come in the form of poems and stories written by a grandparent!

    Badly-written books leave a nasty taste in the minds of those who read them.  Children especially don’t need to have poorly-written dreck thrown at them.  Do we want to turn off our kids from reading?  Do we want them to get the idea when they are young, that all books are poorly written?

    But let me step back to the original concept that bothered me: Kids’ books are not required to meet the same sort of standards as adults.  I will agree that children’s books have a different set of parameters: different vocabulary, shorter sentences, etc.  But a book written for ANY reader should:

    • have good sentence construction and word usage
    • have a consistent voice
    • have stories that have recognizable and distinct beginnings, middles, and endings
    • NOT make the reader grimace at the poor choices of words or the way words are used
    • not confuse the reader with sentences that wander all over the place and end up going nowhere

    If you think that kids’ books don’t have to be written well, tell that to J.K. Rowling, Theodore Geisel, Louisa May Alcott, Sir James Barrie, L. Frank Baum, Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, Fred Gipson, E. B. White…. I don’t have room or time to list more.  The point is, children’s literature is not where we try to pass off the stories and writing that are not good enough for adults.  Indeed, probably the writing should be better: more concise, tighter, more creative use of words, more inventive.  Kids’ minds are growing—they don’t need literary junk.

    Tell me: would you say that children don’t need food that is up to the same standards as their parents?  What about the things they drink?  I’m sure you wouldn’t prepare food for children that was missing key ingredients, or give them chicken that was only “mostly” cooked, let them drink milk that was only a “little spoiled,” or feed them vegetables that are “pretty clean.”  You’d want the best possible quality for them, even if the grocer told you that such things were OK for children.  ”Standards are different for kids.  They don’t need the same quality.”  Do you believe that?

    Stories and poems read by a child are the food and drink of the child’s mind.  Don’t try to tell me that standards of quality are lower for a child—especially not if you are a publisher.

    The Aggravation of Extension-In-Lexis

    Oct 6

    Posted by Tony Burton in Day to day living, Language, Writing well | 9 Comments

    No, it’s not related to the heartbreak of psoriasis. But this condition, extension-in-lexis, can be just as irritating to many confirmed lovers of language. So many of us who work with words want our tools to be well-defined and clear in meaning, but that is not the way it is to be.

    Extension-in-lexis is defined as an: “Increase of the range of meanings of a given word, often through increase of figurative use.” And it happens all the time. For example, how many of us use the word blizzard to mean a snowstorm? The truth is, blizzard originally meant violent blows, a volley of words, or even a rifle shot… not a snowstorm. But on March 14, 1870, it was used in a newspaper to denote a violent snowstorm, and since that time constant usage in that context has reversed the preferred meanings. We talk about snow blizzards and assume that people know what we mean, but if we are referring to a boxing match where an person showers his opponent with violent blows, we may say “a blizzard of punches” as though to clarify this usage. Of course, the reality is that this was one of its original definitions.

    Many words have their meaning changed over time, and as with blizzard, we modern writers may not even realize that we are contributing to the changing of language. Recently there was some discussion on a list I frequent, about the usage of the word tarmac. One staunch protector of original usage stated, and factually, that actual tarmac, or tar-macadam, is no longer used for runways because modern aircraft weigh too much for tarmac to support them. But because of constant historical usage, the meaning of tarmac has been extended to cover any sort of paving material used to construct runways and their associated taxiways, parking areas, and aircraft handling areas.

    My own personally-aggravating word is decimate. Part of the word is “deci,” meaning one-tenth, and originally decimate was a way for the ancient Romans to achieve discipline. If a legion was being fractious and uncooperative, the leader of that legion might walk along the line of the formation and select every tenth legionnaire to be put to death–a strong deterrent to bad discipline. It was also used sometimes in controlling rebellious towns, by putting to death one tenth of the populace, or burning one tenth of the homes, and this meaning persisted into the 16th Century. Now, solemn-faced announcers proclaim that a town was decimated by an earthquake, when they really mean it was destroyed or devastated.

    The word silly in the Middle Ages actually meant happy or blessed. Over time, it came to mean innocent or harmless… then to mean weak… and now denotes foolish or weak-minded. (Of course, the opposite side of this coin is the word nice, which in the 13th Century meant foolish or stupid, and now has a much more pleasant definition, though rather soft-edged and vague.)

    Of course, it’s not just ancient times that created extensions-in-lexis. How about the word boot? Sure, it’s footwear, but as often as not nowadays we use it to talk about starting a computer, or restarting (rebooting.) And whence came that meaning? It came from bootstrapping older computers, which in turn came from the expression “to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps” or to get oneself started without assistance.

    There are also words derived from real words by seemingly logical extension, but which have no root in reality. The word uncouth in Old English originally meant unknown or strange, but over the centuries came to mean not just unknown, but unknown to be used by polite society; in a word, impolite or rude. So, we now have people who say, “He has no couth.” But there never was a word couth that meant anything in the original language, Old English. It’s a new coinage, really.

    I suppose what I’m getting to is this: language is a mutable and constantly changing thing, and extension-in-lexis is only one small part of how it grows and develops over time. No matter how much the anal-retentive among us might like to keep a corral around the language, strictly defining how words are used, it can’t be done. Language is a maverick thing, and very much alive, and will not be caged.

    Copyright ©2009 Tony Burton

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    Root Magic

    Jul 19

    Posted by Tony Burton in Writing well | No Comments

    No, not the kind that requires you to go into forests and fields to dig up plants.  Rather, the roots of words.
    How can we know where we are going, if we don’t know where we came from? (Yes, I know it’s grammatically incorrect, but I’m repeating an old but true adage!)  Along those lines, we also understand better the meaning and power of the words we use, when we know their origins.
    For example, what is the root of the simple word diplomacy?  ”Ah,” you say, “it’s the art of being a diplomat!”  But where did the word diplomat come from?
    Diplomat comes from the word diploma.

    No, I’m not talking about the kind that requires you to go into forests and fields to dig up plants.  Rather, the roots of words.

    How can we know where we are going, if we don’t know where we came from? (Yes, I know it’s grammatically incorrect, but I’m repeating an old but true adage!)  Along those lines, we also understand better the meaning and power of the words we use, when we know their origins.

    For example, what is the root of the simple word diplomacy?  ”Ah,” you say, “it’s the art of being a diplomat!”  But where did the word diplomat come from?

    Diplomat comes from the word diploma.

    “Huh?”

    Yes, it’s true.  Diploma only took on its present meaning of “a certificate given for achieving an academic level of acomplishment” in about AD 1682, in England.

    The word diploma was first used in English around 1645, and comes from the Latin word diploma, which was taken from the identical Greek word that meant “a license or chart,” but which originally meant “folded paper.”  Licenses and charts were important pieces of paper, and as such, were folded both to protect the writing inside and to keep prying eyes from casually seeing their contents.  (The original Greek roots of diploma were diploun “to fold over” and diplos “to double.”)

    (read the rest of the article here….)