Enter The Gender & Sexuality Dictionary Giveaway & Win!
Hester, Jo March, Lisbeth Salander, Hermione Granger, Pippi Longstocking. Great female characters abound in literature—though they certainly could abound more! These women and girls come to life on the pages of our favorite books and on the big screen, as they engage, enlighten, and enrage, and inspire us to look at our own lives a bit differently. But, what makes a great female character? They’re …
If you’re a fiction writer, you know this feeling well: you’re toiling away at your story, charting out your plot and reaching points that will no doubt choke up your reader … when you come to the realization that it’s time for one of your characters to sing their swan song. But how are you going to kill them off? A heroic death by sword …
MLA style refers the style recommended by the Modern Language Association (MLA) for preparing scholarly manuscripts and student research papers. It concerns itself with the mechanics of writing, such as punctuation, quotation, and, especially, documentation of sources. What is the MLA? Founded in 1883, the MLA is a leading academic professional organization in the US that promotes scholarship of languages and literature. Aside from its major …
In active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb. In passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb. If you feel like you need a little more than that, keep reading. What is passive voice? The subject of a sentence is the person or thing that sentence is about. The passive voice is when an action happens to the subject. In …
Poetry has a lot of moving parts. If you’re reading this, chances are you’re starting to explore poetic analysis. Poetic foot and meter are a great place to start. Once you have these basics down, the rest becomes a lot easier. What is poetic foot? A poetic foot is “a unit of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line of poetry.”Poetic feet are based on …
When you hear apostrophe, you probably think of this symbol: ’, right? Well, today, we’re actually talking about the literary device, which is completely different. A literary apostrophe is “when a speaker addresses an absent party as if they were present.” Why do we use apostrophes in literature? Literary apostrophes are great for conveying emotion. They allow the speaker more expression and offer a better view of …
A thesis statement is “a short summary of the main idea, purpose, or argument of an essay that usually appears in the first paragraph.” It’s generally only one or two sentences in length. A strong thesis statement is the backbone of a well-organized paper, and helps you decide what information is most important to include and how it should be presented. What is a good …
Most modern languages are written left to right—like this very sentence. But this is far from the only way it’s done. Some languages are just the opposite, right to left. Other languages don’t run horizontally at all. And historically, there were even writing systems that changed which way they went from line to line. Does all this have you turned around? We’ll point you in …
[ spir-i-choo-el; French spee-ree-tyel ]
Jun 1, 2020