So you want to become a better writer? Be a better reader.

People who write habitually – for work or for fun, journal entries or blog posts, book reports or short stories – often want to put their better foot forward, but the eccentricities and minutiae of the English language can be extraordinarily daunting.

As a professional word person, I know this as well as anyone: There’s always so freaking much to remember, from the basic differentiation between treacherous homophones (their, they’re, there), to the fine points of grammar (subject-verb agreement! the dreaded subjunctive!), to where to put the punctuation. (Some days I’m tempted to save up all the commas, colons and periods and dump them at the end of whatever I’m writing and leave it to the reader to sort out.)

These things are important, to be sure: God is in the details, they tell us, but so, they tell us, is the devil. And sometimes I’m simply asked for simple big-ticket advice on improving one’s writing. 

To read the full article on eu.usatoday.com, click here