The Snowden Emails

By Lucy Ferriss. I’m holding Ed Snowden up as an example. Not of a patriot, or a whistle-blower, or a scoundrel, or traitor. But as an example of what I’ve been telling students and fellow teachers for years: that if you have something to express in your writing, you believe it wholeheartedly, and it carries the urgency of original thought, it will come out by way of elegant syntax and more or less error-free construction. We can yammer on about dangling modifiers and passive voice and incongruity and topic sentences till the cows come home, and none of it will make more than 10 percent of the difference. That Which Must Be Said is the big enchilada. More...