Tag Archives: Writing

Semantic Line Breaks

Posted on 2025-09-11 by jcs

Over at sembr.org, Mattt has an interesting post on what he calls semantic line breaks. The idea, as he expresses it, is Semantic Line Breaks describe a set of conventions for using insensitive vertical whitespace to structure prose along semantic … Continue reading →

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The McPhee Method

Posted on 2025-09-04 by jcs

Surprisingly, one of Irreal’s most popular posts was about writing. Even more surprising, the post was about what dictionary you should be using when writing. That article, Draft #4, is from 10 years ago and discusses why you are probably … Continue reading →

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AI And Em Dashes

Posted on 2025-04-16 by jcs

My old colleague and friend Watts Martin has an interesting and amusing post on em dashes and their indication of AI generated text. As many of you know, Irreal is an em dash friendly site [1, 2, 3, 4] and … Continue reading →

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Dashes

Posted on 2023-03-15 by jcs

It will not be news to Irreal partisans that we here at Irreal are enamored of em-dashes. Some say that they are seldom used but I love em-dashes and probably tend to overuse them. Back in the dark ages before … Continue reading →

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Rich Stevens

Posted on 2022-06-15 by jcs

One of my heroes, perhaps my greatest hero was Rich Stevens. The other day, someone posted a link on reddit to a Salon article about Stevens published a year after his death. It made me remember my huge debt to … Continue reading →

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Structuring Writing as a List

Posted on 2022-03-20 by jcs

Posting to Irreal everyday means I do a lot of writing and spend a lot of time thinking about how to structure a few words into an intelligible whole. Over at DYNOMIGHT there’s a post that takes an interesting view … Continue reading →

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Words and Ideas

Posted on 2022-02-13 by jcs

Paul Graham has a new essay up that discusses words and ideas. It’s an interesting piece that reminds me of one of my favorite quotes. The quote from Daniel Boorstin—a University of Chicago historian and the 12th Librarian of Congress—is … Continue reading →

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More on Webster’s Revised Dictionary

Posted on 2022-01-08 by jcs

Last week, in Draft 4 Revisited, I remembered James Somers’ wonderful article on You’re probably using the wrong dictionary. The right dictionary, it turns out, is Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913 + 1828) but you really need to read Somers’ … Continue reading →

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Draft 4 Revisited

Posted on 2022-01-01 by jcs

It’s New Years day and a lot of you are probably in no mind for an over stimulating rant on one of Irreal’s hobby horses or perhaps even a technical discussion so, instead, I offer a reprise of one of … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: The Oxford Comma

Posted on 2021-12-24 by jcs

There’s a particularly odious type of reprobate who refuses to use the Oxford comma. A subset of the type can claim ignorance as a mitigating factor but, sadly, the majority of the transgressors do so with full knowledge and understanding … Continue reading →

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