Writers Workshop Resumes November 15!

We hope you all enjoyed the summer and are easing back into your fall routines. If you've been in Marshfield Hills recently, then you've probably noticed the transformation that's been going on at the North River Arts Society's headquarters: the reconstruction of the firehouse (the building next to the G.A.R. Hall) into a modern, state-of-the-art educational facility and gallery space. The final phases of construction will continue for another month or so. Therefore, the NRAS Writers Workshop will reconvene on November 15 at 7 p.m. in the NEW space! Feel free to bring a piece of writing that you've been working on and/or some goodies to share with the group.

At that point, we'll resume our regularly scheduled Writers Workshop gatherings on the third Tuesday of each month.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

I found some great Apps for Writers using an iPad

iPad Apps For Writers

If you're a budding writer, and need an iPad app or two to pen your inspirations, then read on and discover this new AppList, which comes as part of our AppStart magazine.

More App Info description & screenshots
• $9.99

  Pages

  by Apple Inc.

  Pages is the ultimate word processor app for the iPad. At $9.99, this app doesn't come cheap - but, if you're planning on writing a novel or two on your iPad, Pages would certainly be a sound investment. With a variety of formatting options, full-screen mode, the ability to save your document in a variety of formats (Pages, Word, PDF), and AirPrint support, Pages is undoubtedly the best word processor app currently available for the iPad. So, check it out, and get creative with Pages for iPad!
  
More App Info description & screenshots
• $0.99

  Penultimate

  by Cocoa Box Design LLC

  Penultimate is the best handwriting app for iPad. Simply draw on the screen with your finger, making notes on your writing task. Within the app, you can navigate between different pages within different notebooks. A variety of paper types, pens, and pen colors are available for users to interact with. And, once you're done, it's possible to e-mail your notes as PDF files within the application. If you want a great note-taking app for your iPad, then you need Penultimate.
  
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• $4.99

  Todo for iPad

  by Appigo

  Sometimes, handwritten notes just won't do. When those times come, be sure to launch ToDo on your iPad, and clearly organize exactly what needs to be done. Whether you need to plan out a chapter, a newspaper article, or a blog entry, ToDo will be able to help. And, with full support for multitasking (under iOS 4), users can jump in and out of ToDo, and quickly resume where they left off. Essentially, ToDo takes task management to the next level. For a clear, clever GTD app, be sure to check out ToDo for iPad.
  
More App Info description & screenshots
• Free

  Dragon Dictation

  by Nuance Communications

  Dragon Dictation, a universal app for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, cleverly converts spoken word into text. After a long day of typing at a physical or virtual keyboard, Dragon Dictation allows users to make notes without having to touch a single key. And, what's more, Dragon Dictation works surprisingly well. Users simply speak into the app, and take notes. Making notes with the app is "five times faster than typing on a keyboard," according to the app's developer. If there are times when typing becomes a total chore, then check out Dragon Dictation now.
  
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• $1.99

  PortaPoet

  by Artisan Engineering LLC

  If you're a budding poet, then you should definitely check out PortaPoet. This universal app allows users to find rhymes for words quickly and easily. The app's developer also notes that, while PortaPoet predominantly targets the act of poem writing, users can also write wedding speeches and songs using the app. Furthermore, PortaPoet offers users "rhyme quality" indication; a handy tool which tells you how "perfect" (or "imperfect") a chosen rhyme is. Overall, PortaPoet is a fun, useful app. And, it's inexpensive, too.
  
More App Info description & screenshots
• Free

  Dictionary! for iPad

  by Catlin Software, LLC

  Dictionary! provides iPad owners with word definitions, for free. But, more importantly, the app also includes a "synonyms" feature which users will undoubtedly find useful. While a dictionary tool is available in iBooks, a native app doesn't come preloaded on iPads, which is a shame. However, Dictionary! is a great app that can do the job for you, for free.
  
More App Info description & screenshots
• Free

  iBooks

  by Apple Inc.

  All writers need to get their inspiration from somewhere. With iBooks, users can read beautiful e-books, available from Apple's iBooks Store, on their 9.7-inch device. And, with the PDF reading feature, you can load on your own work and read it on-the-go too. Apple's universal iBooks app simply amazing. While the iBooks Store doesn't offer as wide (or as cheap) a variety as the Kindle Store does, the app itself is undoubtedly King of the e-book readers. You'd be mad not to download this free app.
  
More App Info description & screenshots
• Free

  Dropbox

  by Dropbox

  If you want to syncronize your work between multiple devices, then you need a Dropbox account, and the free Dropbox iOS application. Here at AppAdvice, we love Dropbox. The service is brilliant, offering users 2GB of online storage "in the cloud" for free. With the universal iOS app, users can access their Dropbox folder on-the-go, download, and upload files all from their mobile device. In order to sign up for a Dropbox account, simply head over to http://dropbox.com. And, don't forget to download the iOS app!
  
More App Info description & screenshots
• Free

  Evernote

  by Evernote

  Evernote allows iOS users to compose text notes, and voice memos, and synchronize them across a variety of devices (such as iPhone, iPad, and computer). Both the universal iOS app, and the desktop version of Evernote are available to download for free. Some people really love Evernote, while others aren't so sure. Try it out, and see what you think.
  
More App Info description & screenshots
• $9.99

  iAnnotate PDF

  by Aji, LLC

  While Apple's free iBooks application allows users to highlight PDF files, you can only use the one color - which is something of a limitation. When reviewing your work, if you love going crazy with a couple of different colored highlighters, then you need iAnnotate PDF - an app which does exactly what it's name suggests. With iAnnotate PDF, users can effectively fully annotate PDF files on their iPad, using a variety of different highlights. The app does come with a price, and that price is $9.99. This is pretty expensive, however, if you need a comprehensive PDF annotating app, then iAnnotate PDF is the app for you. And, don't forget; with Pages, you can save files as PDFs, so they're ready for iAnnotate!
  

Dear Writers: 'Leave the Damn Em Dash Alone'

 

 

 

The Case—Please Hear Me Out—Against the Em Dash

Modern prose doesn't need any more interruptions—seriously.

By Noreen MalonePosted Tuesday, May 24, 2011, at 4:32 PM ET

According to the Associated Press Stylebook—Slate's bible for all things punctuation- and grammar-related—there are two main prose uses—the abrupt change and the series within a phrase—for the em dash. The guide does not explicitly say that writers can use the dash in lieu of properly crafting sentences, or instead of a comma or a parenthetical or a colon—and yet in practical usage, we do. A lot—or so I have observed lately. America's finest prose—in blogs, magazines, newspapers, or novels—is littered with so many dashes among the dots it's as if the language is signaling distress in Morse code.

What's the matter with an em dash or two, you ask?—or so I like to imagine. What's not to like about a sentence that explores in full all the punctuational options—sometimes a dash, sometimes an ellipsis, sometimes a nice semicolon at just the right moment—in order to seem more complex and syntactically interesting, to reach its full potential? Doesn't a dash—if done right—let the writer maintain an elegant, sinewy flow to her sentences?
Nope—or that's my take, anyway. Now, I'm the first to admit—before you Google and shame me with a thousand examples in the comments—that I'm no saint when it comes to the em dash. I never met a sentence I didn't want to make just a bit longer—and so the dash is my embarrassing best friend.

When the New York Times' associate managing editor for standards—Philip B. Corbett, for the record—wrote a blog post scolding Times writers for overusing the dash (as many as five dashes snuck their way into a single 3.5-paragraph story on A1, to his horror), an old friend from my college newspaper emailed it to me. "Reminded me of our battles over long dashes," he wrote—and, to tell the truth, I wasn't on the anti-dash side back then. But as I've read and written more in the ensuing years, my reliance on the dash has come to feel like a pack-a-day cigarette habit—I know it makes me look and sound and feel terrible—and so I'm trying to quit.

The problem with the dash—as you may have noticed!—is that it discourages truly efficient writing. It also—and this might be its worst sin—disrupts the flow of a sentence. Don't you find it annoying—and you can tell me if you do, I won't be hurt—when a writer inserts a thought into the midst of another one that's not yet complete? Strunk and White—who must always be mentioned in articles such as this one—counsel against overusing the dash as well: "Use a dash only when a more common mark of punctuation seems inadequate." Who are we, we modern writers, to pass judgment—and with such shocking frequency—on these more simple forms of punctuation—the workmanlike comma, the stalwart colon, the taken-for-granted period? (One colleague—arguing strenuously that certain occasions call for the dash instead of other punctuation, for purposes of tone—told me he thinks of the parenthesis as a whisper, and the dash as a way of calling attention to a phrase. As for what I think of his observation—well, consider how I have chosen to offset it.)

Perhaps, in some way, the recent rise of the dash—and this "trend" is just anecdotal observation; I admit I haven't found a way to crunch the numbers—is a reaction to our attention-deficit-disordered culture, in which we toggle between tabs and ideas and conversations all day. An explanation is not an excuse, though—as Corbett wrote in another sensible harangue against the dash, "Sometimes a procession of such punctuation is a hint that a sentence is overstuffed or needs rethinking." Why not try for clarity in our writing—if not our lives?

It's unclear—even among the printing community—when the em dash came into common usage. Folklore—if you're willing to trust it—holds that it's been around since the days of Gutenberg but didn't catch on until at least the 1700s because the em dash wasn't used in the Bible, and thus was considered an inferior bit of punctuation. The symbol derives its name from its width—approximately equal to an m—and is easily confused with its close cousin the en dash, used more frequently across the pond, but here meant only to offset sports scores and the like. The em dash isn't easily formed on computers—it requires some special keystrokes on both PCs and Macs—and so I will admit that at least some of my bile comes from, as a copy editor, endlessly changing other writers' sloppy em-dash simulacra (the double dash, the single offset dash) to the real thing.




Perhaps the most famous dash-user in history—though she didn't use the em dash conventionally—was Emily Dickinson. According to the essay "Emily Dickinson's Volcanic Punctuation" from a 1993 edition of The Emily Dickinson Journal—a true general-interest read!—"Dickinson's excessive use of dashes has been interpreted variously as the result of great stress and intense emotion, as the indication of a mental breakdown, and as a mere idiosyncratic, female habit." Can there really be—at the risk of sounding like a troglodyte—something feminine about the use of a dash, some sort of lighthearted gossamer quality? Compare Dickinson's stylistic flitting with the brutally short sentences of male writers—Hemingway, for instance—who, arguably, use their clipped style to evoke taciturn masculinity. Henry Fielding apparently rewrote his sister Sarah's work heavily to edit out some of her idiosyncrasies—chief among them, a devotion to the dash. In Gore Vidal's Burr, the title character complains—in a charming internal monologue—"Why am I using so many dashes? Like a schoolgirl. The dash is the sign of a poor style. Jefferson used to hurl them like javelins across the page." So is the rise of the dash related—as everything seems to be these days—to the End of Men? (I kid—calm down.)

More likely, it's the lack of hard-and-fast usage rules—even the AP's guidelines are more suggestions than anything—that makes the dash so popular in our post-sentence-diagramming era. According to Lynne Truss—the closest thing we've got to a celebrity grammarian, thanks to her best-seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves—people use the em dash because "they know you can't use it wrongly—which for a punctuation mark, is an uncommon virtue."

So, fine, the em dash is easy to turn to—any port will do in a storm. But if you want to make your point—directly, with clarity, and memorably—I have some advice you'd do well to consider. Leave the damn em dash alone.