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  Writing for Business and Pleasure
  Copyright by Stephen Wilbers
  www.wilbers.com
  What’s New  

Each week I offer a Weekly tip, a Weekly error, a Weekly word, and a John Caddy nature photo (downloadable for use as wallpaper), and each month I post a Column of the month.

Here are some other items I’ve posted recently:

 

 

 

 

April 13, 2008:
In memory of three beloved Minnesota authors (click and scroll down)

April 3, 2008:
Nature's Gallery, photos from poet John Caddy, downloadable for use as wallpaper, updated weekly

April 1, 2008:
Compound words: Spelling with or without hyphens updated

March 9, 2008:
Column on "went missing" and other annoying phrases

January 8, 2008:
An invitation posted on my Boundary Waters Chronology to support the Oberholtzer Foundation

January 7, 2008:
Column on the misuse and overuse of "got"

December 29, 2007:
Columns on apology and customer relations letters

November 14, 2007:
Boundary Waters Chronology updated with information on the 2006 Cavity Lake, Famine Lake, and Redeye Lake fires; on the 2007 Ham Lake fire; and on the August rampage by the "Ely Six"

November 11, 2007:
Column on eliminating wordiness

October 27, 2007:
Column on knowing your dashes from your hyphens

October 20, 2007:
Column on the do's and don'ts for using e-mail effectively

September 18, 2007:
Teachers: A tribute

August 9, 2007:
Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: Reflections

May 1, 2007:
New column posted below vocabulary-building exercises

March 17, 2007:
Notice of paperback release of my book,
Keys to Great Writing

January 21, 2007:
Columns on how to write thank-you letters

October 12, 2006:
David Mura on libraries, including two poems, presented at the September 18 celebration held at the Minneapolis Central Library

September 2, 2006:
Poem for Dale Schatzlein in memory of my friend of 25 years who died unexpectedly on August 31, 2006

August 6, 2006:
More advice about how to write a
complaint letter, as well as another column on legal writing

August 2, 2006:
Ernest Oberholtzer's classic 1934 complaint letter

July 23, 2006:
New
numbers usage exercise

March 12, 2006:
Boundary Waters History updated with information regarding the August 2005 Alpine Lake fire, the largest fire in the Boundary Waters in the past 10 years, and with statistics representing a dramatic increase in the number of emergency incidents in 2005.

January 26, 2006:
Writing assessment: 15-point quiz (PowerPoint)

December 28:
Monthly tips now being collected into a book, 30 Tips for Writing with Style, to be published in 2007

November 20:
Salutations: FAQ updated with guidelines for addressing married couples when one person has a professional title and the other does not, as in Dear Dr. and Mr. Smith

November 15:
PowerPoint exercises from my writing workshops on word choice, common errors, dangling modifiers, hyphens in unit modifiers, and numbers usage

November 9:
January 10
and February 14 dates now open for registration for my monthly open-enrollment workshop, Tuesdays with Wilbers.

October 23:
New column on deadlines

September 7:
My weekly column distributed by e-mail now available on a six-month subscription basis

August 14:
PowerPoint presentation on when to use nonrestrictive commas

July 1:
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness history updated with information about outdoor adventurer Lloyd Skelton's disappearance

May 3:
Link to Mary Alice Hansen's newly published Boundary Waters book, Sawbill History and Tales

New gray wolf population figures added to Boundary Waters Chronology

April 30:
Weekly poem, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column

April 23:
Link to the Ernest Oberholtzer webpage

April 12:
Links to amazon.com added to Recommend Reading & Resources

April 10:
Web Style Guide link

March 29:
Word choice errors, as identified by the pickiest wordsmiths of the Minneapolis Star Tribune (an exercise)

March 8:
This Northern Nonsense: The Life of Ernest Oberholtzer in Verse (book in progress)

February 3:
The Grammar of our Desire: A Romance with Language (book in progress)

February 1:
Link to
Parallel structure

January 27:
Style:  Monthly tips by e-mail link added

January 20:
Dictionaries added to Contents page

December 17:
PowerPoint presentation on Oral Presentation Skills

December 15:
New columns delivered weekly to your inbox

December 14:
Monthly tips for writers: free one-minute exercises

November 29:
Article about my teaching in the Center for the Development of Technological Leadership

November 24:
New feature, how to write application letters

November 15, 19, & 22, 2004:
Boundary Waters Chronology updated with information regarding the black bear population and the four recorded incidents of bears attacking humans in Minnesota

November 1, 2004:
Index to syndicated columns updated to include most recent columns

October 24, 2004:
The story of winning academic acceptance for American Sign Language (ASL)

October 6, 2004:
Take the Proofreading Challenge: A fun proofreading exercise

September 22, 2004:
Weekly columns delivered to your inbox

Take the Grammar Challenge: An assessment linked to an Error Checklist

September 9, 2004:
Error Checklist

Take the Punctuation Challenge: An assessment linked to an Error Checklist

August 31, 2004:
Writers Free Reference added to Links to online writing resources

August 24, 2004:
PowerPoint:  How to use, a column identifying the do's and don'ts of effective PowerPoint presentations

August 7, 2004:
Workshop Review: PowerPoint Presentation for participants in my writing workshops and seminars

"In Search of a Whole, Live Moose," a story, originally published in 1988, about my son's first canoe trip in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

April 25, 2004:
Boundary Waters Chronology for nature writers

April 20, 2004:
Link to Resources and recommended reading

December 20, 2003:
Advice on how to write an effective résumé

November 20, 2003:
New winner of the Golden Pen Award

October 19, 2003:
New link to
The Loft Literary Center (Minneapolis): Programs and services for writers.  See other links to online resources for writers

May 12, 2003:
Sixth Golden Pen Award

March 30, 2003
A second copyediting exercise, based on an
M.O.T. Final Exam

March 9, 2003:
College Board Review article, the article that got me started as a writing consultant

February 10, 2003:
Third column, "The do's and dont's of saying thank you," posted under Thank-you letters

January 24, 2003:
Second column posted under Thank-you letters

January 23, 2003:
Columns on
"E-mail: Do's and Don'ts"

New review of my book
Keys to Great Writing

January 10, 2003:
Link added to William Sabin's The Gregg Reference Manual, a guide widely used by on-the-job writers. Also, see Links to online writing resources.

January 4, 2003:
Additional columns on these topics: 

Grant proposal writing

Legal writing

Sales letters & proposals

January 2, 2003:
A copyediting exercise, based on an M.B.A. Final Exam

 


Thanks so much for your participation in
the Minnesota Authors Campaign!

Thanks to your generosity, we raised more than $100,000 in support of our beautiful new downtown library.

October 12:
Although our campaign has officially ended, we've added five new chairs -- for
Anne Gillespie Lewis, Ewa Rydaker, Sharon Darby Hendry, Mary Logue, and Al Sicherman -- thanks to some enthusiastic supporters who couldn't allow their authors to be omitted.

July 15:
I'm delighted to announce that in the final phrase of our campaign 47 additional Minnesota authors will be honored with chairs in our new library. (A few more names will be added as we finish recording our many pledges.) These additions bring our total to 215 chairs, which represents more than $100,000 raised in support of our beautiful new library. Wow!

Congratulations to our Minnesota authors. And my heartfelt appreciation to everyone who participated in our campaign.

Here are the 47 authors:
Annette Atkins, Marge Rogers Barrett, John Berryman, Lee Blessing, Thomas L. Friedman, Robert Bly, Betsy Bowen, Carol Ryrie Brink, Emilie Buchwald, Gabrielle F. Civil, Philip Dacey, Michael Dorris, Kat Duff, Bob Dylan, Heid E. Erdrich, Barbara Flanagan, Wanda Gag, Diane Glancy, Cheryl Green, Erin Hart, Pete Hautman, Michael J. Henley, William S. Howell, Ed Bok Lee, Kathy Lewis, Judith Mattison, Patricia Condon McDonald, Dale Mulfinger, Joseph E. Murphy, Tim Nolan, Isabel Monk O’Connor, Oliver K. Olson, Sally J. Power, Gordon Parks, Beverly Rollwagen, Ole E. Rolvaag, John Sanford, Charles Schulz, Roxanne Sadovsky, John L. Shannon, Jr. , Margot Siegel, Wallace K. Swan, Brad L. Thompson, Anne Ursu, Laura Waterman Wittstock, Susan Welch, and Jon Zurn.

July 6:
And here's another one for Catherine Watson!

June 26:
We have three more chairs -- for Lois McMaster Bujold,
Patricia Wrede, and Pauline Schatzlein!

June 17:
Here are our 153rd and 154th chairs! These are for Sherry Quan Lee and Morgan Grayce Willow.

June 9:
We have three more chairs -- for Carol Dines,
Bryan Thao Worra, and Dale Mulfinger! That makes 11 new chairs in one week!

June 7:
Here's another one -- for Larry Sutin!

June 6:
We now have our 145th, 146th, 147th, and 148th chairs. These are for
Jonis Agee, Louis Alemayehu, Michael Dennis Browne, and Carolyn Holbrook.

June 4:
And here are three more chairs -- for Abigail Garner, Edith Mucke, and Alex Soth!

May 24:
Here are our 140th and 141st chairs -- for Connie Wanek and Louis Jenkins!

May 23:
Wow! Another grand slam -- we have four new chairs for
Joyce Sutphen, Sharon Chmielarz, Sigurd Olson, and Taiyon Coleman!

May 19:
And one more chair just before the grand opening of our beautiful new library -- our 135th -- for Alexs Pate!

May 17:
Here's our first grand slam, plus one -- five new chairs in one day -- for
Katherine Lanpher, David Mura, Jane St. Anthony, Lisa Ann Berg, and Jack El-Hai!

May 16:
Another double -- our 128th and 129th chairs-- for Ka Vang and
Mai Neng Moua!

May 15:
We now have a chair for Jane Pejsa -- our 127th!

May 12:
And here's our 126th chair, this one for Margaret Hasse!

May 11:
We have two more chairs -- our 124th and 125th -- for Anna George Meek and August Wilson!

The good news is I'm inundated with pledges -- with more than 60 coming in just in the past few days. The bad news is it takes me more than a few minutes to record and post each pledge and send a confirmation to each donor, so please be patient if you don't see your pledge for a day or two. Thanks.

May 9:
We're on a roll -- we have another three chairs today, our 121st, 122nd and 123rd, for
Juliana Pegues, Pamela R. Fletcher, and Susan Deborah King!

May 8:
Wow! Three new chairs in one day -- for Cheri Register, Sara Evans, and Peg Kerr!

May 2:
Here's our 117th chair -- this one for
Thien-bao Phi!

April 28:
Two new chairs in one day! Our 115th and 116th chairs are for Natalie Goldberg and Jim Lenfestey.

April 21:
Here's one that will make a lot of people happy. Jim Moore -- poet, founding member, and loyal supporter of the Loft Literary Center -- has been awarded our 114th chair!

April 20:
Well, that didn't take long -- we now have our 113th chair (and we're past the halfway mark), and it's for Laura Ingalls Wilder!

This chair gives me special pleasure. I read every one of Wilder's books to my children when they were growing up, then my daughter read through the series again on her own.

April 19:
And our 112th chair is for our very own Garrison Keillor!

One more chair and we'll be more than halfway to our goal of 225 chairs named for Minnesota authors. I think we'll be well beyond the halfway mark by the May 20 grand opening of our beautiful new downtown library.

April 18:
Here's another chair -- our 111th -- for Roy McBride!

April 6:
Julie Schumacher
is our 110th Minnesota author to be honored with a chair in the new library!

April 1:
This is no April Fools' Day joke -- we have our 109th chair, this one for William Hezlep!

March 27:
Two in one day -- our 107th and 108th chairs -- for Gus Hall and
Nolan Zavoral! That's more than $54,000 we've raised for the new library.

March 24:
We have another chair! This one, our 106th, is for
Neala Schleuning.

March 21:
Here are two more chairs -- our 104th and 105th -- for Susan Hunter McLean and
Marsha Wilson Chall!

March 19:
This is the best day yet for our campaign -- four chairs have been secured for Kathryn Kysar, Florence Chard Dacey,
Susan Allen Toth, and R. D. Zimmerman. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

March 15:
Our 99th chair has been designated for
John Minczeski!

March 8:
The final pledge for Thomas McGrath was mailed to me from Alice McGrath, along with this photograph and a note:

"We were married in the '50s."

March 1:
Two new chairs in two days! Our 97th chair is for Patricia Weaver Francisco.

February 28:
And here's our 96th chair! This one is for
Patti Frazee.

February 18:
Here's another chair -- our 95th -- for Irene Paull!

February 16:
We're on a roll! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Our 94th chair is for Roseann Lloyd.

February 13:
And here are three more chairs: these for the incomparable F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jim Berg, and
Biloine (Billie) Young!

February 10:
Hamline University's GLS Alumni Association has pledged the remaining funds needed for not one, but two, chairs! Our 91st and 92nd chairs will be in honor of Deborah Keenan and Mary Rockcastle.

February 9:
Here's another one, our 90th! This chair is for Pamela Hill Nettleton.

February 6:
It is with special pleasure I announce our 89th chair -- designated for Meridel LeSueur!

February 1:
Wow -- our second chair this week! Our 88th chair has been designated for Betty Bridgman!

January 30:
Here's one, our 87th, for one of my favorite Minnesota authors: Bart Sutter! Go, Bart!

January 22:
And here's our 86th chair, for Vincent Wyckoff!

January 19:
And now we have our 85th chair, with 140 to go, in the
Minnesota Authors Campaign! This chair is for Jim Heynen -- and I'm not telling who the anonymous donor was, but you'll recognize Professor Eileen Thomas's name because she's already done so much to support his campaign.

January 15:
Our 83rd and 84th chairs, in Duke Klassen's and Marsha Qualey's names, have been designated
as part of the Minnesota Authors Campaign!

December 29:
Marge Rogers Barrett's 92-year-old mother thought her daughter should have a chair in the new Minneapolis Public Library as part of the Minnesota Authors Campaign. Way to go, Mom! That's our 82nd chair, with 143 to go.

December 21:
It's fun watching your pledges coming in -- thank you, thank you, thank you! And now we have a new chair for Vicky Lettmann, our 81st (144 to go), as part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign. It all goes to support the new Minneapolis Public Library.

December 19:
And here's number 80: a new chair for Larry Gavin, as part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign!

December 17:
A new chair for Leo Dangel, our 79th, in support of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign! That's $10,000 contributed to honor those authors and to support the new Minneapolis Public Library.

December 15:
Wow, two new chairs in one day, one for Kathleen Coskran and one for Judith Katz, our 77th and 78th, in support of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign!

December 10:
And now our 76th
Minnesota Author, Susan McLean, will be honored with a chair in the new Minneapolis Public Library!

December 9:
With a chair for Mary L. Junge, we now have our 75th chair designated as part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign!

December 6:
With two new chairs, one for Future Authors (sponsored by Loft instructors and their families) and one for Iris C. Freeman, we now have honored 74
Minnesota Authors with chairs in the new Minneapolis Public Library.

November 30:
We now have our 72nd, this one for David Pichaske, designated as part of the Minnesota Authors Campaign. The funds were donated by Michelle Pichaske as a surprise for him, so if you know David, don't tell him.

November 16:
We now have chairs for Edna A. Anderson, Bill Holm, Howard Mohr, and Beth Weatherby, designated via this website as part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign. That's $6,000 and counting for the new Minneapolis Public Library. Keep those pledges coming!

November 14:
Two more chairs, for Jane Resh Thomas and Warren Woessner, have been designated via this website as part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign. Wow! That's $4,000 and counting for the new Minneapolis Public Library. Keep those pledges coming!

November 7:
We now have a chair for Barrie Jean Borich, who has been honored in the
Minnesota Authors Campaign!

November 4:
Another chair in the
Minnesota Authors Campaign Judge and Mrs. Ray G. Miller have pledged $500 to honor their daughter, Leslie Adrienne Miller

October 27:
As part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign, a chair has been designated for Sandra Benitez!

October 23:
Another new chair designated for Joseph Amato as part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign!

October 19:
Two new chairs designated for authors Joe Paddock and Don Olsen as part of the
Minnesota Authors Campaign!

September 8:
Launch of a grassroots
Minnesota Authors Campaign in support of the new Minneapolis Public Library


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