I’m a little nervous about writing this post. That’s because Ben Yagoda, the arbiter of the way we speak and write now, will probably read it.
Yagoda, who was one of my journalism professors at the University of Delaware, just released a new e-book, You Need to Read This: The Death of the Imperative Mode, the Rise of the American Glottal Stop, the Bizarre Popularity of ‘Amongst,’ and Other Cuckoo Things That Have Happened to the English Language. Written in a witty, conversational style, the book delves into such lingual phenomena as the annoying trendiness of “curate,” the American love of Britishisms, and the reason I’m constantly writing “quote marks go outside punctuation!” in bold red type on student papers.
Aside from being required reading for language nerds, You Need to Read This is a worthwhile read for freelance writers. Some of the issues Yagoda tackles are more common in speech than the written word, such as the (over)use of “awkward” and the curious popularity of “what does that even mean?” But the chapters on beginning sentences with “so” and the rise of “logical punctuation,” among others, are particularly relevant to freelance writers.
From sharing an article on Twitter to pitching a new editor to drafting copy for a magazine, freelance writers need to choose the right words for every situation. In other words: you need to read You Need to Read This.