Tag Archives: Reading

Have you tried the new reduced whiches and thats diet?

Posted on 8 January 2013 by Propagandum

You don’t have to be a professional writer to benefit from making your writing sound more natural. The words which or that are often stodgy and unnecessary. Following Strunk and White’s helpful suggestion – under their banner ‘Omit needless words’ – … Continue reading →

Posted in Publishing, Words, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Gramophone, Film, Typewriter by Friedrich Kittler (book review)

Posted on 10 May 2012 by Propagandum

Friedrich Kittler’s spiky and complex masterpiece of multimodal media archaeology (published by Stanford University Press in 1986) was our first book for the Cambridge books-about-books group. Not an obvious choice: it’s not about books, but there again, books aren’t necessarily codexes any more. … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Media analysis, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Harry Potter and the Publishers’ Holy Grail IV

Posted on 16 December 2011 by Propagandum

I have been trying in the three previous Harry Potter posts to look at what went right with J. K. Rowling’s book series. In the first half of this final wildly ambitious post I’m attempting to get somewhere near a theory … Continue reading →

Posted in Business, Publishing | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

‘A page of good prose remains invincible’ 1

Posted on 5 December 2011 by Propagandum

On April 27, 1982, less than two months before his death from cancer, John Cheever appeared at Carnegie Hall to accept the National Medal for Literature. While his colleagues stood and cheered (“John had nothing but friends,” said Malcolm Cowley), … Continue reading →

Posted in Publishing, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Are you receiving me?

Posted on 6 July 2011 by Propagandum

This is the first line of a new blog. Sure enough, I’m going to write about my business and what we do: we help other businesses – maybe yours – to communicate. But I hate corporate blogspeak. I’m going to … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment