Working With Words

A weblog devoted to spurring a conversation among those who use words to varying degrees in their daily work. Hosted by John Ettorre, a Cleveland-based writer and editor. Please email me at: john.ettorre@gmail.com. "There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real." --James Salter

Thursday, October 13, 2011

We're Back (?) You Decide, People... Should we return? Do we have anything more worth saying that we haven't already said here a hun...

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Carlo Takes Note Of Cindy's Anniversary I loved this story for its sedimentary layers of personal connections. It was written by an old ...

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Our Favorite Book Title, Part 24 This month the top slot goes to a book with the oddly appealing title God Explained in a Taxi Ride (has an...

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

The Power of Word of Mouth First, my friend Amy Mac kept telling me about it, and how people would stand in long lines to get in to the Lake...

Monday, March 22, 2010

Teaching Others to Fish By Helping Them Reveal Their Own Inner Riches 'The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share you...

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Humor That Cuts a Bit Too Close To the Actual Truth to Be Funny The satirical Onion newspaper offers this take on the sluggish job market f...

Friday, March 19, 2010

It Mostly Depends On Your Preconceptions 'The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed ...

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Happy Irish Day 'My Irish side is craving the Guinness I'll have at 4pm. My Ukrainian side clipped the recipe for Lola's Beef Ch...

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Few Things We Couldn't Help Noticing The Next Big Things : home tests for sperm count (gentlemen, drop your drawers). After that: usi...

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Favorite News Photo & Video of the Week A 42,000-year-old baby wooly mammoth, preserved intact by the Siberian permafrost. Whether you...

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Stop the Presses! Karl Rove's new book contains serial falsehoods . Who would have thought such a thing was possible? You can review ear...

Friday, March 12, 2010

'Mere Knowledge Is Not Enough' 'Man has two windows to his mind: through one he can see his own self as it is; through the other...

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Please Join Me Next Week for a Session On Using Linkedin To Build Your Network I welcome readers from the Northeast Ohio region to join me n...

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Best Lead of the Month 'Last summer in Seattle, Starbucks opened 15th Avenue and Tea, an unbranded café featuring “small batch coffees s...

Monday, March 08, 2010

Some Iconic Celluloid Gowns to Remember We liked the gentle play on words in this L.A. Times magazine headline , and the accompanying articl...

Sunday, March 07, 2010

Why You Really Should Send That Letter The tongue is prone to lose the way, not so the pen, for in a letter we have not better things to say...

Saturday, March 06, 2010

Lebron: Will He Stay or Go? The Cavs' Lebron James has formally petitioned the NBA to change his uniform number next year. Veteran NBA w...

Friday, March 05, 2010

Amen To That "It is a continuing scandal that this vicious demagogue is kowtowed to by Republican politicians and enabled by nominally ...

Thursday, March 04, 2010

A Humbling Thought for Teachers, But a Good Reminder for Mentors 'You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it in hims...

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Stop the Presses! The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reports that a recent study found that too much TV can hurt children. The shock waves are...

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Pardon Us While We Try Not to Lose Our Lunch Sarah Palin, the leading emblem of the return of the American No Nothing movement (you can lear...

Monday, March 01, 2010

Our Favorite Book Title, Part 23 In a modest change of pace, this month's favorite-- I Don't Know What I Want, But I Know It's N...

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Mastery You need not see what someone is doing to know if it is his vocation. You have only to watch his eyes; a cook mixing a sauce, a surg...

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Lost in Translation Between the Genders 'The word love has by no means the same sense for both sexes, and this is one cause for the ser...

Friday, February 26, 2010

Support the Independents, Part 6 'Few independent bookstores are more iconic than Powell's Books. Even readers who've never been...

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Food for the Hungry Mind In our continuing quest to understand all sorts of things and all sorts of people, we find ourselves occasionally c...

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Seven Ways to Revive Your Marriage We're not usually given to reading magazines such as Woman's Day , but somehow we happened to com...

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

How Good Coaches & Good Editors Are Alike A few months ago, I posted this vivid quote about the eternal hankering to fiddle with someone...

Monday, February 22, 2010

A Reading List for Futurists Okay, I'll admit it: I'm more interested in the past than the future, at least intellectually. It's...

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Power of Half This story --about a privileged family that collectively decided to give half its wealth away, and everyone (including the...

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Things You Learn By Reading I never knew until reading this New York Times piece that 125 million people have ITunes accounts (the number i...

Friday, February 19, 2010

Tackling the Fear of Self-Employment Q: Among the big hurdles to self-employment are self-doubt and fear of failure. How did you deal with t...

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Go For the Heart 'It's easy to fool the mind but it's hard to fool the heart.' --Al Pacino

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The Muscles of Writing Are Not So Visible 'Writing is an athletic activity. It comes from your whole body, your knees, lungs, spine--all...

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

How Parents Live On Through the Memorable Things They Say 'When kids are young, they step on your toes. When they're older, they ste...

Monday, February 15, 2010

Our Favorite Headlines of the Week We had a bunch lately, so why not share the abundance, we figured? This one nicely plays off the title of...

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Is Your Reader Inside Your Mind? "My own favorite writer of essays is Emerson. Why is this? Because he writes as if I am inside his min...

Friday, February 12, 2010

A Voice Tumbling Into Your Ear 'Prose should have a flow, the forward momentum of a certain energized weight. It should feel like a voic...

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Here's Something You Don't Always Understand At First "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going." --the late opera ...

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Employment vs. Freelance: Pros and Cons 'If you want to make a career of writing, should you look for a full-time job in a company or st...

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

You Gotta Be Tender & Tough 'Each morning I place on my writing table a carnation and a hammer.' --Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poe...

Monday, February 08, 2010

Catching Up on the Death Of the Author of Catcher J.D. Salinger, author of Catcher in the Rye , died recently, touching off the felling of m...

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Group Coupons In our continuing quest to share ideas consistent with what's being called the New Frugality (you know how hack journalism...

Saturday, February 06, 2010

Here's One of The Best Definitions We've Heard 'The purpose of marketing is to make selling superflous.' --the late managem...

Friday, February 05, 2010

Busting Myths With Style For decades, Popular Mechanics has been known as a prime destination for geeks. But you don't have to be a gee...

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Our Favorite Blog Name of the Week Field Notes from the Future has the ring of something that seems worth a look, doesn't it? Our incess...

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Lebron to be Featured in Super Bowl Ad The advertising industry bible Ad Age says it's been long in the works, and that it'll featu...

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

No, This is Not a Joke Headline in The Onion Bristol Palin Sets Up PR Firm. She's 19, by the way. If you're in the market for such...

Monday, February 01, 2010

Meet the Madoff Minions More than a year after Bernie Madoff's massive ponzi scheme rip-off culminates with his imprisonment, Mother Jon...

Sunday, January 31, 2010

We Can't Decide if This is Useful, So We Ask Y'All to Help Us Decide ' Visuwords uses Princeton University’s WordNet , an opens...

Saturday, January 30, 2010

On the Need to Find a Fresh Way To Say Something Quite Familiar 'I am able to say that while I am not ruggedly well, I am not ill enough...

Friday, January 29, 2010

Ridiculous Sign of the Month 'Become an intellectual for under $20.' --a sign hanging over a table at Joseph Beth Bookstore . The ta...

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Emails From Beyond the Grave Dearly beloved, let me apologize right now for the fact that I won't be posting anything nor responding to ...

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

The Advantage of Belief 'Most people do not believe in anything very much, and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.' ...

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Microlending for the Urban Poor Since the subject of microlending came up recently in one conversation here (in the context of developmental...

Monday, January 25, 2010

The Internet's Effect on the Market For Freelance Writing & Journalism 'What's sailing away, a decade into the 21st century,...

Saturday, January 23, 2010

How to Avoid Gobbledygook Phrases In our continuing series on small but crucial ways to improve your writing, we've focused on the plagu...

Friday, January 22, 2010

How Kafkaesque... A woman who recalls knowing Franz Kafka . You can review an earlier mention of the author/mystic and man about town (the t...

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Our Favorite Headline of the Week This surely caught our attention and lured us into reading the story. Would it do the same for you? For it...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Can You Read Your Way Out of Depression? This fellow is sure that Saul Bellow's work helped him do just that. What do you think?

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Our Favorite Book Title, Part 22 This month, we're calling it a toss-up. We thought it was a dead heat between two great titles: The Ha...

Monday, January 18, 2010

Forget Leno & Conan: Just Bring Back Arsenio We couldn't agree more with what The Root had to say on this topic. At the risk of so...

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Remembering a Life With the 'Cadence & Fervor of Poetry' 'My dad and I were as different as could be (I made sure of that), ...

Friday, January 15, 2010

A Recipe for Staying Fresh 'In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date o...

Thursday, January 14, 2010

A Picture is Worth A Thousand Words, Especially When It's a Photo Like This All the endless coverage of the disaster in Haiti didn't...

Wednesday, January 06, 2010

The Sublime Frank Deford On How NY Covets Lebron We've long admired veteran sportswriter Frank Deford's graceful essays, which can b...

Tuesday, January 05, 2010

A Lovely & Concise Thought for the Day 'Science is the poetry of reality.' --English biologist Richard Dawkins. You can learn mo...

Monday, January 04, 2010

An Experiment in Living Simply--In College This is one of the more uplifting things I came across over the holiday weekend--students at my ...

Saturday, January 02, 2010

How Do You Jiggle Your Synapses? 'Educators say that, for adults, one way to nudge neurons in the right direction is to challenge the ve...

Friday, January 01, 2010

A Very Happy New Year To You All The wife is in India on a long-awaited trip, the OSU Buckeyes just won the Rose Bowl, it's cold and sn...

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

I Prefer Reading 'People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.' -- Logan Pearsall Smith . This line brought to mind an e...

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Keeping You Apprised Of All Things Awkward in the World of Punctuation A few months ago, we brought you news about the plague of unnecessary...

Monday, December 28, 2009

Our Favorite Book Title, Part 21 Our winner this month: First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process . The nod for runner-...

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Truth is Tough 'Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it...

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