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Real letters are awesome.

newsweek:

How could we not open this letter to the editor?! The first paragraph, taken by itself (and typed out on a typewriter nonetheless), is quite the gem:

Dear Sir,

Before I start this letter to you I just want to say that I don’t have a way to tweet, Dot Com, or e-mailed. Everyone worries about the US Postal service, all they have to do is write a letter and put a .44 cent stamp on it and it’ll get to your mailbox. And you know, it’s kind of nice to go every day to that box and find a letter in it from a friend or a magazine from Newsweek or US World or Time. 

Anyway, I hope you will see fit to read it but I doubt that you will.

Not only did we read your letter, kind sir, but in a few days you’ll have one of your own in your mailbox, sent from your friends at Newsweek. We agree. It is kinda nice to get mail.

braiker:

Good list. There’s lots to add, too. For example:

To be sure …

At the end of the day …

Comprised of …

Quipped

… on the ground

Grow a business

Impact (as a verb)

Impacted

Impactful

(I could go on.)

taylorlorenz:

Hugo Lindgren finds a list of words Kurt Andersen banned when editor of New York magazine.

I might have to take issue with comfort food. 

beatsnrants:

Author Zadie Smith’s Rules for Writers

1) When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.

2) When an adult, try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.

3) Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

4) Avoid your weaknesses. But do this without telling yourself that the things you can’t do aren’t worth doing. Don’t mask self-doubt with contempt.

5) Leave a decent space of time between writing something and editing it.

6) Avoid cliques, gangs, groups. The presence of a crowd won’t make your writing any better than it is.

7) Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

8) Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

9) Don’t confuse honours with achievement.

10) Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.

(via quiethouses)