November 2016 – Princeton Writes

Writing at Its Best

Stephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T13:58:33-05:00

Writing at Its Best by Laura Valenza This post continues our series of reflections on the nature of “good writing.” For Laura Valenza, Campus Collections Assistant at the Princeton University Art Museum, writing at its best requires the engagement of all the senses and a willingness to embrace the unexpected. A writer must also be an observer. Writing at its best expresses something universal and complex by showing a scene or just a moment that might otherwise have gone unobserved. Every tourist has certain obligatory photographs that must be taken of classic destinations such as the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel [...]

Writing at Its BestStephanie Whetstone2020-01-14T13:58:33-05:00

scullery (SKŬL-ə-rē)

Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-28T12:00:40-05:00

Definition (Noun) In modern usage: A small room attached to a kitchen, in which the washing of dishes and other dirty work is done; a back kitchen. In Context "She had some cardboard, she thought, some old dress-boxes, in the scullery, where most of the litter of the house accumulated." Elizabeth Ferrars, Alive and Dead, 1974.

scullery (SKŬL-ə-rē)Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-28T12:00:40-05:00

pleonasm (PLĒ-ə-năz-əm)

Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-21T12:00:33-05:00

Definition (Noun) The use of more words in a sentence or clause than are necessary to express the meaning; redundancy of expression either as a fault of style, or as a rhetorical figure used for emphasis or clarity. Also: an instance of this; a superfluously worded expression or phrase. In Context "The term 'digital computer' is not a pleonasm: There are, in fact, analogue computers which, by their design, are not restricted to the digital representation of information." Thomas Riechmann, Learning in Economics: Analysis and Application of Genetic Algorithms, 2001.

pleonasm (PLĒ-ə-năz-əm)Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-21T12:00:33-05:00

sophistry (SŎF-ĭ-strē)

Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-14T12:00:43-05:00

Definition (Noun) Specious but fallacious reasoning; employment of arguments which are intentionally deceptive. In Context "Bryan Edwards, the Jamaican planter-historian, justified this coercion with the sophistry: 'Men in savage life have no incentive to emulation: persuasion is lost on such men, and compulsion, to a certain degree, is humanity and charity.'" Alvin O. Thompson, The Haunting Past: Politics, Economics and Race in Caribbean Life, 1997.

sophistry (SŎF-ĭ-strē)Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-14T12:00:43-05:00

suffragist (SŬF-rə-jĭst)

Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-07T12:00:20-05:00

Definition (Noun) An advocate of the extension of the political franchise, especially (after about 1885) to women. In Context "Eleven panes of glass in the Hitchin post office were broken by a Letchworth suffragist, who was taken to the police station and afterwards escorted out of the town by a constable." "Window Breaking: Renewal of Suffragist Outrages," The Times, June 29, 1912.

suffragist (SŬF-rə-jĭst)Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-07T12:00:20-05:00

The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson Whitehead

Stephanie Whetstone2016-11-01T10:23:49-04:00

Critical Assessment "In his dynamic new novel, Colson Whitehead takes the Underground Railroad—the loosely interlocking network of black and white activists who helped slaves escape to freedom in the decades before the Civil War—and turns it from a metaphor into an actual train that ferries fugitives northward. "The result is a potent, almost hallucinatory novel that leaves the reader with a devastating understanding of the terrible human costs of slavery. It possesses the chilling, matter-of-fact power of the slave narratives collected by the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, with echoes of Toni Morrison’s 'Beloved,' Victor Hugo’s 'Les Misérables' and Ralph Ellison’s [...]

The Underground Railroad (2016) by Colson WhiteheadStephanie Whetstone2016-11-01T10:23:49-04:00