Joan Rivers, One More Time

Instant Quiz

Can you correct the error in the sentence below? Scroll to the bottom of today’s post for the answer.  

Cindy’s praise enervated me, and I raced back to my computer to finish the report.

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In my previous post, I wrote about the word slunk, which showed up in a recent New Yorker article even though it’s nonstandard.

Today I’m inviting you to read a paragraph from the article about Joan Rivers. It is stunningly well written!

Many professionals do what author Emily Nussbaum did: end some of their paragraphs with a climax or a restatement sentence. (Don’t get nervous about the fancy term “restatement”! All it means is that you say pretty much the same thing you just said – in a different way.)

Putting this extra little polish at the end of a paragraph is a practice we should imitate. (But don’t overdo it! Notice that I said “some of their paragraphs.”)

Here’s the paragraph about Joan Rivers, with the restatement sentence in blue.

For half a century, this dark comedy of scarce resources had been her forte: many hands grasping, but only one golden ring. Rivers herself had fought hard for the token slot allotted to a female comic, yet she seemed thrown by a world in which that might no longer be necessary. Like Moses and the Promised Land, she couldn’t cross over.

You can read the entire article here.

Portrait of Joan Rivers courtesy of Underbelly Limited

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Instant Quiz ANSWER

The word you need today is energized.

Cindy’s praise energized me, and I raced back to my computer to finish the report.  CORRECT

What Your English Teacher Didn’t Tell You is available in paperback and Kindle formats from Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
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