About Editing and Writing

a blog by Jack Limpert, Editor of The Washingtonian for more than 40 years.

  • HOME
  • BIO
  • BLOG
  • ABOUT EDITING
  • ABOUT WRITING
  • CONTACT

Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Spars With President Biden Over Economic Policy

May 17, 2022

From a Washington Post story by Jeff Stein headlined “Jeff Bezos spars with Biden White House over inflation”:

The White House is sparring with Jeff Bezos after the Amazon founder took aim at President Biden’s economic policies on Twitter.

Bezos, one of the wealthiest men in the world, criticized the White House’s economic record by pointing to high inflation on Friday, tweaking Biden by suggesting the administration’s new social media disinformation board should review the president’s claim that raising corporate taxes would bring inflation rates down. On Sunday, he kept it up, sharing a post that criticized Biden’s claims to have reduced the federal deficit. Bezos alleged that the administration tried to approve even more economic stimulus but was stopped by Sen. Joe Manchin III — an apparent reference to the White House’s long-stalled Build Back Better economic agenda. Those plans, though, were designed as long-term structural changes to the U.S. economy, not as economic stimulus.

Continue Reading...

From Talk Between New York Times Columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens: Do You Really Think President Biden Will Run for Re-Election?

May 16, 2022

From the weekly conversation between New York Times columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens:

Gail Collins: Bret, you and I live in a state that has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. But that didn’t stop a teenager with a history of making threats from getting his hands on a semiautomatic rifle and mowing down 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo on Saturday.

Bret Stephens: It’s sickening. And part of a grotesque pattern: the racist massacre in Charleston in 2015, the antisemitic massacre in Pittsburgh in 2018, the anti-Hispanic massacre in El Paso in 2019 and so many others. There’s a bloody crossroads where easy access to weapons and increasingly commonplace conspiracy theories meet.

Continue Reading...

Latest News in Russia-Ukraine War

May 16, 2022

From the Wall Street Journal:

Ukraine: Ambitions are growing in Kyiv about what would define victory for Ukraine, as Ukrainian forces continue to take back Russian-occupied territory. Many Ukrainian refugees are heading back home, following the Russian pullback from the central part of the country.

More than 260 Ukrainian fighters who have been holding out for months at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol were evacuated ahead of a planned prisoner exchange, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said Monday.

Russian forces continued to shell cities in Donbas and carried out a missile strike in western Ukraine.

Continue Reading...

How a Writing Coach Beats Writer’s Block

May 16, 2022

From a story on poynter.org by Roy Peter Clark headlined “How a bigshot writing coach beats writer’s block”:

It might give you comfort to learn that America’s friendliest writing coach on occasion succumbs to writer’s block. On a rare occasion, he refers to himself in the third person, but will stop doing that — right now.

I am thinking about this now because instead of revising my 300-page book manuscript, I am writing this essay on writer’s block. I could be watching the hockey game or mowing the lawn, but this will do for the moment.

Continue Reading...

Jack Shafer: Why Jeff Bezos’ Tweets Are So Dumb

May 16, 2022

From a Jack Shafer Fourth Estate column on politico.com headlined “Why Jeff Bezos’ Anti-Biden Tweets Are So Dumb”:

Why do the billionaires tweet? The subject here, of course, is the motivation of the Ironmen of Twitter ego-tripping, Elon Muskand Jeff Bezos — not Bill Gates, whose tweets taste like weak dishwater, neither sudsy nor drinkable.

Musk tweets because his obsessive-compulsive disorder commands him to chime in on everything from his investments to his crackpot Covid-19 views to pronouns (they “suck”) to rude comments about Gates to name-calling (Elizabeth Warren, in his eyes, is a “Karen”) to raising the ire of the Securities and Exchange Commission. “Some people use their hair to express themselves, I use Twitter,” Musk tweeted in 2019.

Continue Reading...

About Solving the New York Times Crossword Puzzle

May 16, 2022

From an Inside the Times story by Rachel Fabi headlined “A ‘Queen’ of the Crossword Reigns”:

MONDAY PUZZLE — Hello, solvers, and welcome back to another installment of the Monday Wordplay column, where we help you get to know the tips and tricks of the New York Times Crossword puzzle. Most new solvers know that Monday puzzles are the easiest of the week, but one feature with which new solvers might not yet be acquainted is the online crossword puzzle archive. It contains every puzzle published by the New York Times Crossword editor, Will Shortz, stretching all the way back to 1993.

Continue Reading...

Jelani Cobb Named Dean of Columbia Journalism School

May 16, 2022

From Columbia University president Lee Bollinger:

It is with great pleasure that I write to announce my appointment of Jelani Cobb as the next Dean of Columbia Journalism School, as of August 1, 2022. Professor Cobb is the Ira A. Lipman Professor of Journalism and Director of the Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.

Continue Reading...

Sherri Dalphonse Named Editor of Washingtonian Magazine

May 16, 2022

From Cathy Merrill Williams, publisher of Washingtonian magazine:

I am delighted to announce that our next editor-in-chief will be Sherri Dalphonse. She will be only the fifth editor in Washingtonian’s 57-year-history and the first-ever woman editor-in-chief. We are one of a very small number of woman-owned media companies and we now proudly have women leading both editorial and sales!

Continue Reading...

How AP Stylebook’s Editors Decide How to Change Their Guidance

May 16, 2022
From Colleen Newvine – product manager, AP Stylebook:

If you have ever wondered how the AP Stylebook’s editors decide how to add or change their guidance, a new section now available on AP Stylebook Online offers insight.

Below is an excerpt from the new section, which will also appear in the AP Stylebook, 56th Edition, coming on June 1.

“The English language is fluid and changes incessantly. What last year may have been very formal, next year may be loosely informal. Word combinations, slogans and phrases are being added and becoming part of the language. …

Continue Reading...

What Washington Post Reporters Were Slacking About on Sunday

May 16, 2022

From a story on politico.com headlined “What Washington Post reporters were slacking about on Sunday”:

“Jeff Bezos Criticizes Joe Biden in Twitter Spat Over Inflation,” by WSJ’s Tarini Parti and Bradley Olson.

Exchange No. 1:

  • Biden’s original tweet: “You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.”
  • Bezos’ response: “The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead. Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”
Continue Reading...
Next Page »
Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on Twitter

About Editing

What Editors Should Look for in Writers

By Jack Limpert

When I became a magazine editor, I had no clue what to look for in a writer. As time went on, I began to think about left brain-right brain types of writers–left brain types being better at logic and analysis, right brain better at imagination and creativity. The split seemed to play out most noticeably with art directors–we went through lots of them and it seemed that we’d go from one that was creative and disorganized to another that was well-organized and not very interesting.

Continue Reading...

About Writing

Writing That Is of Marginal Interest

By Mike Feinsilber

So there I was happily reading Lynne Olson’s fascinating book, Those Angry Days, about the pre-World War II struggles between the isolationists who wanted to keep America out of the war and the internationalists who couldn’t stand America’s hands-off policy while Nazi bombers were pounding London night after night.

And there I came across a series of pencilled in comments in the book’s margins by a previous reader of the book, which I’d borrowed from the D.C. Public Library. “Dear Reader” is how I’ve come to think of Olson’s ghostly second guesser. And  I’ve come to think of Dear Reader as elderly and a woman because of her frail, thin, and tiny handwriting. Maybe that’s sexist. My evidence is thin.

Continue Reading...

“Words Are the Only Things That Last Forever.” – William Hazlitt

Return to top of page

Copyright © 2022 Jack Limpert | Site by AuthorBytes