Quote of the week
“And now I have finished the work, which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor the sword, nor devouring age shall be able to destroy.”
–Ovid

Two 30-second writing exercises (updated weekly)
Weekly error: What's wrong with the following sentence?

“One of my favorite novels is Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms which I first read in high school.”

Weekly tip: Revise the following sentence for stylistic effect.
“Her actions were misleading, deplorable, and unusual.”

Tuesdays with Wilbers
Join me for my regular Tuesday afternoon workshop on February 16,
and a new offering, Profiling Your Success,
which I will team-teach with noted author Greg Breining on March 9.

From annoying phrases to punctuation, salutations, wordiness, and writer’s block,
click Contents
for 101 FREE writing resources & topics and dozens of FREE exercises.

Contents What’s new Seminars Books Resources Contact

Weekly error Weekly tip Weekly word Weekly poem Column of the month

“Better Writing in Six Weeks”
(e-mail course)

Weekly columns
(by e-mail)

Monthly tips
(free)

“Writing with Style”
(e-mail course)

Take the Grammar, Proofreading, Punctuation, and Word Choice Challenges.

To my Minneapolis Star Tribune readers:
Look for me on the first, third, and fifth Mondays of each month.
Receive my columns every week by e-mail.


Keys to Great Writing Techniques for writing with style (reviews)	Writing for Business Collected columns, winner of a Minnesota Book Award	Writing by Wilbers Collected columns, vol. 2, now available as an e-book

Now available

Books in progress

A Grammatical Affair:
A Romance with Language
(a novel)

52 Tips for Writing with Style

E-mail instruction

“Better Writing in Six Weeks”

Free monthly tips

Weekly columns

“Writing with Style”

Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Reflections Poem for Dale Schatzlein

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness: A History
for students, teachers, and writers interested in nature and the environment

Nature's Gallery
Photos by poet John Caddy,
downloadable for use as wallpaper

I’d like to hear from you. Send me a message.

In memory of four beloved Minnesota authors

Paul Gruchow
(1947-2004)

Carol Bly
(1930-2007)

Jon Hassler
(1933-2008)

Bill Holm
(1943-2009)

About the author

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Stephen Wilbers is a writing consultant, author, and syndicated columnist. He has offered training seminars in effective writing to more than 10,000 business, technical, legal, and academic writers.

Dr. Wilbers offers on-site writing seminars to a wide variety of clients, from Mayo Clinic to the Pennsylvania Bar Institute and the Minnesota Department of Health. He is a Senior Fellow in the Master's of Technology program in the Technological Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota. In addition, he has taught in the Carlson School of Management’s M.B.A. Program, the Program in American Studies, and the Program in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Minnesota. In 1995 he won an Outstanding Faculty Award for his teaching in Hamline University’s Graduate Public Administration Program.

He has written more than 800 syndicated columns on effective business writing appearing in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Orange County Register, and other publications.

He has published two collections of his columns, Writing for Business (winner of a 1994 Minnesota Book Award) and Writing by Wilbers. Now used as a textbook in college writing classes, Keys to Great Writing (a book offering advice on how to write with clarity, emphasis, and style), has been described as "brilliant and illuminating," providing principles that "can be applied to any type of writing, including fiction."

This Northern Nonsense: Ernest Oberholtzer and Mallard Island, his chapbook of poems about the gentle giant who helped save the Boundary Waters Canoe Area from development, was recently published by Red Dragonfly Press. He is currently writing a comic novel, A Grammatical Affair: A Romance with Language, which offers a review of common writing errors and stylistic technique in the form of a sexy, wildly romantic, heartbreaking, sappy love story.

Dr. Wilbers earned his B.A. at Vanderbilt University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Iowa, where he wrote a history of the Iowa Writers' Workshop for his dissertation, which was published by the University of Iowa Press. He was a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at the University of Essex in Colchester, England. At the University of Minnesota he directed one of the largest student academic support services operations in the country before serving as Associate Director of the Program in Creative and Professional writing. He and his wife Debbie have two grown children and live in Minneapolis, where he has been a proud member of The Loft Literary Center since 1981, serving on the Loft's board of directors from 2003 to 2009 and as the Loft board chair from 2007 to 2009.