If you're serious about writing, then like any other kind of artist you need to have a selection of tools, and you need to know how to use them. Since the level of writing at salonblogs is generally high, I'm betting that most of us here have been avid readers ever since we learned how to spell. That's tool one: our insatiable thirst for reading material. The expert writer has a voice inside that knows how words fit together and when we're in the "flow" the words stream out of us seemingly of their own accord. It's that internal database of all the books we've ever read that tells us if we're on track (or if we need to hold down 'delete' for awhile).

Other key tools include:

Dictionaries. You should have several. Merriam-Webster's 10th Collegiate Dictionary is more or less the standard, but the 7th is also solid. I keep Fowler's Shorter Oxford on hand to check British spellings, and you'll find that an unabridged dictionary is extremely useful on occasion. Specialized dictionaries on law, technology, finance, etc., never take up too much space on the shelf. I've never been a fan of Random House or American Heritage lexicons, but both are servicable and American Heritage is less permissive than most.

Style Manuals. Strunk and White's The Elements of Style is one of those "everybody should have one" books. Unlike some works on style, it should be read through in a single sitting if possible, and then re-read periodically. "Omit needless words" is the big tip from this one. The Chicago Manual of Style is worth having and not that expensive. It answers almost any question about style and punctuation you could ever ask. Theodore Bernstein's The Careful Writer is out-of-print but easily available used. Why have it? Sometimes you'll be wondering whether "masterful" or "masterly" is called for, or maybe the "gauntlet/gantlet" distinction has escaped you. Then spring for Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage or put it on your Christmas wish-list. It's like Bernstein, but better.

Etymological Dictionaries. Sometimes you'll just want to know where a word came from. I keep Barnhart's Etymological Dictionary at hand, but Oxford has a good one, too. No, most people don't care where the word "nuance" came from, but the master writer might (ex. "hue," "color," "cloud," Old Fr.).

Quotations. In this category, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is the big dog, but any guide to classic quotations is really worth having.

Classics. Sooner or later, you'll want to have the complete works of Plato, Conan Doyle, Shakespeare, Poe, Mencken, and any other writer who speaks to you. You don't do this overnight, but in the next ten years try to fill out the gaps in your collection.

Many of these resources are available online, but I've never found the Internet versions to be of equal utility with their printed brethren. No mention of Roget's because I still don't understand what a thesaurus is (except a sure-fire road to bad writing). Did I skip an essential text in my listing above? Let me know.

Once in a Decade

Yeppers, Raven HQ is right in the middle of the Perfect Storm. Here's CNN Meteorologist Arch Kennedy:

"This is a storm system you see once in a decade. There's probably a lot of damage out there that just won't be reported until tomorrow daylight."

Glad He Showed Up

We didn't think the situation in Zambia was likely to be resolved in a good way, considering that the government there is opposed to any kind of genetically modified food—even though it's free and their people are starving to death. This is a job for experts in international relations, genetic engineering, and industrial agriculture. Guess who England sent?

Former James Bond actor Roger Moore urged Zambia Saturday to reconsider its decision to reject genetically modified (GM) food aid to ease severe shortages affecting three million of its people.

6:31:44 PM       

A few days ago we posted a Potemkin-like version of a student paper for various reasons; namely, for the thigh-slapping guffaw-factor but also as a finger-wagging tsk to the cut-n-paste prodigy who pulls up the article. Some have looked askance at this endeavor, accusing the Raven and his fellow conspirators of Googlesluttery, an accusation of considerable gravity.

Unlike minor blogging offenses, which include link whoring, blogslobbery, and bloggotry, the act of Googleslutting is a compound crime—seeking the "thumbs up" of a hit without the requisite addition of useful content to the Web. You could add "latex greenspan" to a posting and net some fetish traffic, but you'd disappoint the ardent photo-seeker who landed on your page. In effect, you would be spamming the Net and while both the popular writer and the hated shill command the attention of thousands, only one of them would survive an encounter with the public.

By the above definition, however, the bogus essay wasn't Googlebait inasmuch as we're already getting hits for "raven sample essay" and the like. Yet upon reflection, I think a crime was committed here, because the provision of false content represented as authentic weakens the fabric of the Web by potentially reducing user confidence in the database.

We wouldn't want to remove satire as a form of expression on the Net by any means, nor does satire work if it's surrounded by a marquee of blinking lights reading "joke here," but yes, non-native speakers and younger readers might well be endangered. This leads to a larger question of our responsibility as contributors to the Web. Don't we have the duty to do a bit of fact-checking before we post? In my dig at Isabel Allende yesterday I nearly listed her nationality as Venezuelan and had I done so, this would have introduced the kind of error that makes the Internet a questionable tool for serious research.

While we'll never have an agreed-upon Code of Weblogging Ethics, it should be part of our on-going discussion. We do, I believe, owe it to ourselves and our readers to check our spelling, our grammar, and our facts in the spirit of due diligence. The Internet is only as reliable and functional as the trust we have in the validity of its content, and as amusing as the thought of a craven freshman being nabbed for plagiarism may be, there's something very disquieting about undermining the trust that such a person had held in the capacity of the Net to deliver accurate information on request.

Dial www.911

There was a time back in the early '90s when we began to focus on some new directions in law enforcement, and one of the most promising was "community policing," i.e., working with citizens and enlisting their aid in the crime-fighting mission. Sure, it was an overused buzz-word, and came to mean a lot of different things, but a positive effect was that it got officers out of their patrol cars and back on the beat. Police work best when they form social relationships with the people they serve.

The latest development in this transformation appears to be e-policing, which puts your local cop in your chatroom. Well, not exactly. Works like this: The cop in your area publicizes his e-mail address. When you have concerns, whether it's a barking dog or a strange car driving around your block, you can drop the fuzz an e-mail buzz. It's been working in Washington, D.C., according to Officer Todd Mattingly:

"Residents are constantly e-mailing me, telling me things they wouldn't call the police for or don't want anyone to know they're saying."

"Parking your patrol car on the block and walking up and down, knocking on doors—that's just so Flintstones," said Lt. Keith Roch. "It makes no sense to do that anymore when you can talk to 2,000 people online at once."

10:03:15 AM