Category Archives: Writing and Editing

Virginia's Ghost, Writing and Editing

Not Just Anywhere: Writing about Specific Places in Fiction

2 Comments

A few days ago, I finished the second draft of my novel, Virginia’s Ghost. I printed the whole thing out and have since started reading it again, scribbling notes in the margins about things I want to correct in the third draft. But more than correcting errors, I need to add much more detail. One storyline in the novel is set in 1928 Toronto, but when I was reading through the book, I was struck by how blandly generic my setting seemed. I could have been writing about almost any North American city in the twenties. Rather than writing about made-up places based vaguely on my impressions from Hollywood movies, I need to write about real places that existed in Toronto back then. And I need to learn a lot about these places, either by visiting them (if they still exist) or reading about them.

What better place to start than right in my own neighbourhood? A pivotal scene between my well-to-do young flapper Constance and her caddish boyfriend Freddy takes place in a park–but not just any old park. I’m rewriting the scene to take place in Craigleigh Gardens, just off South Drive in the South Rosedale area of Toronto. The present-day park was the original site of Craigleigh, a 25-room Victorian mansion that belonged to wealthy businessman Edmund Boyd Osler. He lived there from 1877 until his death in 1924, after which the house was torn down and the 13 acres of land it stood on were presented to the city as a public park. Below are the stately stone and wrought-iron gates to Craigleigh that were erected in 1903. If you look closely, you may be able to make out 1903 in gold on each gate between the two main pillars.

And here’s the plaque that commemorates the Osler family’s extraordinary gift to Torontonians:

I’m fortunate enough to be able to treat myself to a walk in this lovely park almost every day. It’s airy and spacious, and it’s a wonderful place for my dog Trinka to romp and stomp and enjoy some precious off-leash time.

And as I walk through the park, which would have been quite new back in Constance and Freddy’s day, I now imagine the two lovers playing out one of the most emotionally wrenching scenes of their young lives before a cluster of colourful onlookers, all of whom have definite opinions about what’s taking place. Just knowing more about Craigleigh Gardens and experiencing the beauty of this place every day helps bring the scene between Constance and Freddy to life in my mind. I only hope that my experience will translate into writing that vividly brings it to life for my readers.

Email, RSS Follow
General Musing, Writing and Editing

Is Pointing Out Errors in English Just Plain Rude?

15 Comments

I hate to admit to such poor taste, but recently I was watching a certain TV show in which brides try on wedding dresses before an entourage of friends and family members who often seem all too eager to rip their self-esteem to shreds. If there’s anything good to be said about this show, it’s that it provides valuable lessons in how not to behave. All that aside, I was horrified the other night when the mother of a hapless bride criticized her dress, saying that it needed more embezzlement. “Embellishment!” I shouted to the screen. “Embellishment, not embezzlement!” The usage crime went unnoticed by the bride or anyone else for that matter, and I wonder what I would have done if, God forbid, I’d been sitting in that bridal salon with that unpleasant family. Although I wouldn’t have shouted the way I did to the TV, I would have been awfully tempted to say something, even a meek and mild “Um, did you happen to mean embellishment, perchance?”

Outside the context of teaching or editing, is it ever all right to point out errors in English? Being a polite Canadian, I seldom do it. But being an editor, I’m always dying to. Honestly, I hate to see the English language abused, and I think it’s vital that people make the effort to speak and write correctly. If I didn’t think this way, I wouldn’t be doing what I do. As well, when you edit people’s writing for a living, it’s sometimes hard to fall out of the habit of pointing out mistakes. And so my polite Canadian self is invariably at war with my editor self, generating a lot of inner turmoil whenever I hear someone mangling the language. Of course, in this matter of correcting versus not correcting, context is everything. I’ll tactfully point out errors to my Russian friend at the dog park because she’s told me before that she wants to speak better English. She’s never taken offence, so no harm done. But you’re really putting your neck on the line when you choose to correct people you don’t know all that well, no matter how politely you do it.

Recently, I attended a networking event and was sitting beside a woman I’d chatted with perhaps once or twice before. She was promoting a book she’d written and showed me a postcard that summarized the plot. She knows I’m an editor, and she pointed out an error in the postcard to me. I read the rest of it and noticed an ungrammatical, wordy sentence that was actually much more of a heinous crime than the typo she’d noticed. Hesitantly, I told her it was ungrammatical and then went on to suggest a better sentence she could use in its place. With this act, I extinguished all joy. She just looked at me grimly, and a profoundly awkward silence passed between us. In her mind, I had committed a serious faux pas, and we barely spoke another word to each other for the rest of the event.

The way I see it, by pointing out the first error, she opened the door for me and I merely walked through it. And I said what I did in the spirit of helpfulness; I could see how the postcard could be improved, and thought I should take the opportunity to tell her how to do it. But perhaps I’m wrong about the appropriateness of my actions. What would you have done if you’d been in my situation? Have you ever pointed out someone’s error to his or her face, only to have it backfire? Is it ever right, outside the context of editing someone’s writing or teaching them about the language, to point out errors?

Email, RSS Follow
Freelancing, Writing and Editing

Five Years of Freelancing

7 Comments

It dawned on me yesterday that it’s been exactly five years since I left my full-time job as an appraiser and cataloguer (and default catalogue editor) for a Toronto auction house. I remember the day very well: after enjoying a hearty Indian lunch with all the staff, I made the rounds to say my goodbyes. When I’d exhausted my words and there was nothing left to be said, I headed out the door and waited for the King Street streetcar. It was a sunny Friday afternoon, and a barely perceptible hint of fall in the air heralded changes to come. As I boarded the streetcar and watched my workplace recede from view, I rode out of my old life and into a new one. I was bombarded with a mixture of emotions unlike anything I’d ever known: elation about the new possibilities that were unfolding before me and the freedom that I would have being my own boss; fear that I was entering an unknown realm and would find myself out of my depth; and sadness that I was leaving behind both my safe zone and all the friends I had known there. It was my choice to become a freelance editor, but that didn’t mean that the tears didn’t flow on that ride home.

As with any new venture, it took me a while to find my feet. In the beginning, I found it almost impossible to establish a daily routine, as I was so accustomed to going to an office every day where things would just fall into my lap, demanding to be dealt with. Now I had to generate work for myself, which was not something I’d ever had to do before. I did feel that I was cut out to be an editor. I’d always had the required persnicketiness–everyone said so. But I was worried: I didn’t know if I honestly possessed anything resembling entrepreneurial smarts or good business sense. And I certainly missed being surrounded by other people; now it was just me sitting in front of the computer, trying to drum up work when I was a complete unknown in the field. How utterly alone I felt.

What saved me both personally and professionally was meeting other editors. I joined the Editors’ Association of Canada (EAC), attending both monthly meetings and seminars so I could listen to speakers, sharpen my skills, and network in my rather introverted way with other editors. Gradually, I began to find my tribe: a group of editors I could trade stories with about the delights, frustrations, and occasional horrors of working in our field. Through these editors, I began learning more and more about the business of being an editor, which was something they don’t teach you much about in night-school editing courses. Furthermore, I began to find real work opportunities through my contacts–even more so when I joined Facebook and found not only the editors I’d met at Toronto branch meetings and seminars, but also EAC members scattered across the country. The important message I’ve taken away from all this is that you just can’t get anywhere without developing a network. You need your tribe.

Five years after that streetcar ride, I find myself in a pretty good place. The work is steady, and I feel confident in my abilities as both an editor and a businessperson. I enjoy my clients, some of whom have become friends, and they seem to genuinely appreciate what I do for them. Most of all, after five years, I have finally become that person I was meant to be.

Email, RSS Follow
Writing and Editing

The Pros and Cons of Writing Dialect Phonetically in Fiction

6 Comments

In 19th-century novels, it’s not at all unusual to come across dialect that is written phonetically. Consider the following, an exotic bit of Yorkshire dialect from a servant named Joseph in Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1847: “There’s nobbut t’ missis; and shoo’ll not oppen ‘t an ye mak’ yer flaysome dins till neeght.” Taken out of context like this, this snippet is nearly incomprehensible; it’s almost impossible to know precisely what Joseph is getting at. (All I know for sure is that he’s telling Heathcliff’s tenant, Mr. Lockwood, that the mistress of Wuthering Heights is not going to let him in). It’s not just the bizarre vocabulary (those pesky flaysome dins) that makes it hard to comprehend, but also the peculiar spellings of familiar words, such as shoo’ll for she’ll, and neeght for night.

Would 19th-century readers have understood any better than we do what Joseph was saying? It’s difficult to know for sure, but I would imagine that at the very least, they would have expected to see phonetically written dialect in novels. After all, such a detailed and realistic rendering of speech would have functioned to clearly convey the speaker’s social standing and level of education, which were important preoccupations at the time, especially in England. But does such dialect have any place at all in 21st-century fiction?

Many contemporary authors, particularly in fantasy and historical genres, continue to attempt phonetically written dialect. I’ve edited about half a dozen such authors over the past year or so, and I continue to puzzle over the question of how much is too much. Current authorities on writing fiction feel strongly that any at all is way too much, and that words like ye and yer, and even dropped gs, should go the way of the dodo. The trend is to shun what Renni Browne and Dave King, authors of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, call “trick spellings and lexical gimmicks.” Instead, writers are advised to concentrate on adjusting word choice, grammar, and syntax to convey a person’s social status through speech. There is no question at all that this is excellent advice.

The main argument against phonetically written dialect is that it’s simply too hard to read, and naturally it’s impossible to be in favour of anything that destroys clarity in writing. Readers should never get bogged down in dialogue and feel that they have to translate it into English. And if they have to read it multiple times to get the gist of it, then the lexical tricks are clearly overdone. However, is it fair to eliminate all phonetically written dialect? If it was good enough for a literary giant such as Emily Bronte, shouldn’t it be good enough for contemporary writers?

Although I usually advise clients that phonetically written dialect is out of fashion, many still insist on using it because they feel it adds the right note to their work, particularly if the novel takes place in a bygone era. I ask them to consider the tastes and expectations of their audience and sometimes ask them, “Would your readers have trouble with this?” One of my clients gave her novel to several readers to evaluate (a practice I highly recommend). Many of them had read widely in the genre she was writing in. She made a point of asking them specifically whether they could understand the dialect, and most were fine with it.

If your book’s audience has little or no difficulty with phonetically rendered dialect, I see no difficulty in using it. The editing becomes a matter of making the dialogue more readable by eliminating what doesn’t work and maintaining consistency in particular dialect spellings. I tend to toss out particularly wacky spellings that seem distractingly bizarre or vocabulary that I feel most contemporary readers wouldn’t understand. To my mind, authors should err on the conservative side and remember that just a little phonetically written dialect goes a very long way. And if it really does add a little flavour and colour to a book, then that’s hardly a bad thing.

Email, RSS Follow
Virginia's Ghost, Writing and Editing

The Fine Art of Reading Your Work in Public

4 Comments

Recently, I signed on to read an excerpt from the novel I’m writing, Virginia’s Ghost, at the July 21st meeting of the Writers and Editors Network (WEN). It’s been eons since I’ve read anything before an audience. I’ve often thought that apart from dealing with the inevitable frayed nerves, reading in public seems straightforward enough. You don’t have to memorize anything, so mostly what you need to do is just get up there and read as expressively as you can, right? Is that really so hard?

I learned how woefully ignorant I was about public-speaking techniques this past weekend when I attended a workshop given by Heather Dick of the Sirius Theatrical Company called Speak! Capture! Empower! The day-long workshop is specifically designed for authors and other speakers who read in public. The goal is to discover how you can best grab and hold the attention of your listeners. When Heather first told me about the workshop, I was eager to sign up and learn how I could “lift the words off the page” (as she likes to say) and successfully avoid prompting my listeners to catch up on their sleep.

Heather Dick of Sirius Theatrical Company

I instinctively knew that Heather’s workshop would be well worth my while. She is a vibrant woman who sparkles with energy, humour, and confidence, and if anyone could transmit public-speaking smarts to me, it would be her. I also knew that she seriously (or siriusly, if you’ll pardon the pun) knows her stuff. After all, Heather has acted in, directed, or produced more than seventy shows across Canada, has numerous film and TV roles to her credit, and has been teaching acting for twenty-five years. And in 1989, she started the Sirius Theatrical Company.

One of the things we talked about in Heather’s workshop was freeing our voices. Stress and other factors that have accumulated throughout our lives limit our voices, so it’s no wonder they often sound weak and strained. What to do? We learned a series of exercises designed to free our muscles so that we can in turn free our voices and realize their full potential. We also learned how to breathe naturally and to balance ourselves properly to support our voices. We practised our diction by reading Gilbert and Sullivan lyrics, and learned how to interpret text by reading poetry, employing many tools that would increase the power and expressive quality of our words. As well, we reviewed the texts we’d brought to read, marking them up in ways that would aid our reading.

Then the time came to take the stage and practise our text before a small audience of workshop participants. But first, we learned how to cope with both a microphone and our pages of text, which was not as easy as it sounds. Next, Heather reviewed how to best make the sort of entrance that would immediately engage an audience, which was something I’d never given any thought to before. As well, we learned how to make a gracious exit.

When I got up to do my reading, I felt the tension tightening in my chest and the butterflies fluttering in my stomach, but I remembered Heather’s instructions about what to do before starting, and gradually the stress dissipated. I know that my voice faltered here and there, and that I read some passages too slowly and didn’t always manage to convey the depth of feeling I was after, but I certainly did much better than I would have without Heather’s instruction. And what’s more, once I got rolling and fell into the rhythm of my words, I was having a blast. Even better, I now have an array of wonderful, shiny new public-speaking tools at my disposal that I can use when practising my text for the big day. When July 21st rolls around and I’m called upon to take the stage, I’ll definitely be ready.

Email, RSS Follow
Writing and Editing

Seeing Editors as Allies, Not Enemies

2 Comments

I belong to an online writers’ and editors’ group, and when time allows, I entertain myself by catching up on the discussions in the forums. People generally behave themselves admirably, but the writers, most of whom are self-publishing, do lash out at editors from time to time. One day, I saw an author complaining that she’d been ripped off to the tune of three thousand dollars by an editor. Other forum participants were quick to become indignant that any editor would even dream of charging her such an amount to edit her book. What an outrage!

Feeling profoundly irritated, I wrote that it was ridiculous to consider the cost outrageous without knowing the facts–after all, the author hadn’t even mentioned what the word count was or told us anything about the nature of the book. Nor had we seen a sample of the writing. Without this information, no one could possibly know the extent of the editing required. And had anyone even considered the question of what the author actually received for her money? As she later revealed, the answer was nothing–she paid three thousand dollars to the “editor,” who never delivered any work at all. The unsuspecting  author had not been dealing with a professional editor–she’d fallen victim to a smooth-talking scam artist.

Apart from the author’s misfortune, what bothered me about this whole exchange was the readiness of the writers who were commenting to believe that editors are taking them for a ride. Apparently, some writers still don’t see the value in what editors have to offer. I suspect that those who feel this way have never actually had their own work edited, so they can’t even begin to understand the invaluable contributions an editor can make to a manuscript. As well, such writers fear criticism, as most of us do to one degree or another, but rather than being able to perceive it as helpful and constructive, they feel threatened by it. And so they insist on standing in their own way, and the book suffers as a result.

I still occasionally meet people who think that all editors do is correct typos; they confidently assert that they can do their own spell-check and grammar check, thank you very much–as if spelling and grammar were all there was to it. But editors are involved in shaping the entire manuscript, and they cover the broad strokes as well as the fine details. A good editor will diplomatically call attention to a plot that doesn’t even get off the runway, loose ends that dangle messily, a protagonist who bores readers to tears, or a character who talks like he’s a nineteenth-century British aristocrat instead of the twentieth-century American student he’s supposed to be. Furthermore, a good editor offers constructive advice for fixing these problems.

I believe that writers who don’t appreciate what editors can do for their work are in a small and ever-shrinking minority. But often the writers who need editorial help the most are the very ones who are most resistant to receiving it. It’s time that such resistant writers began to see editors as allies who can help them create their best possible work, not as enemies who will either take advantage of them or belittle them. All editors contend that every writer needs an editor, and most writers I know wholeheartedly agree with this contention. And as an editor who also writes, I know that I’ll need an experienced and eagle-eyed editor to help me with my book before I publish it; I wouldn’t dream of skipping this essential step. Even for the best writers, the choice is clear: if you’re putting your book out there for public consumption, hire a professional editor.

Email, RSS Follow
Writing and Editing

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess: The Irritating Art of Exaggeration

8 Comments

Over the virtual water cooler of Facebook, my editor friends and I sometimes discuss irksome little things we frequently come across in manuscripts, and I’ve noticed one thing that comes up a lot. Writers take note: if you happen to feel like irritating editors, one of the best ways to go about it is to be overly dramatic and exaggerate in some fashion. Unsubtlety in your writing can take many forms, many of which are dead easy to pull off and have nothing to do with actual word choice.

Take punctuation, for example, which is probably the simplest tool for exaggeration at your disposal. Many writers make a habit of using more than one exclamation mark. They think that to do so automatically makes what they have to say that much more exciting!!! Why use one exclamation mark when you can use two (or even three)? Two exclamation marks will surely make what you’ve written twice as thrilling, won’t they? Well, you probably already know what my response to that is. Use just one. I really must insist. And for heaven’s sake, if you have dialogue, don’t punctuate it with an exclamation mark and then add the dialogue tag, “he exclaimed.” To do so is redundant, because we know he’s exclaiming from the exclamation mark.

But multiple exclamation marks aren’t the only type of punctuational (if I may say that) excess. To convey extreme, possibly life-threatening astonishment from which we are unlikely to recover, many writers use something popularly known as the interrobang, which looks like this: ?! You might use it in a sentence such as the following: “Seriously, can you really believe that Caroline is dissing the interrobang?!” Yes, I am dissing it, for it is not something that serious writers ought to use. It is not even a standard punctuation mark. Use it in your social networking if you feel you really must (but please don’t tell me that you did).

Another form of excess that must be avoided is too much capitalization. Have you ever noticed how some Writers attempt to give their Precious Words a sort of Earth-Shattering Significance by capitalizing them? Need I say more? The effect is generally pompous at best. Unless you’re a pompous individual and would like to advertise that fact, don’t capitalize to excess. Capitalize only those words that really need it by virtue of their being accepted proper nouns.

Similarly, don’t shout in your writing, as shouting quickly becomes wearisome to those on the receiving end (your readers). Think of an obnoxious drunk person yelling at you repeatedly and you’ll get the idea. Shouting in writing takes a couple of different forms–namely using all CAPITAL LETTERS or bold type. AND THESE SHOULD NEVER, EVER BE USED IN COMBINATION, ESPECIALLY WITH TOO MANY EXCLAMATION MARKS–OR INTERROBANGS!! DID YOU HEAR ME?

If you wish to emphasize something, you can do so in an understated, tasteful way by using italics. But always use them with a light hand, saving them for when you really need them. For one thing, they are more difficult to read than regular Roman text. And when you give added emphasis to too many things in your writing, not much of anything seems important after a while. As well, the reader tends to either get tired or develop a migraine, and you don’t really want to be responsible for that.

Do your readers–and editor, for that matter–an enormous favour by sparing them the above excesses. Trust me, they will thank you for your consideration.

Email, RSS Follow
Writing and Editing

In Praise of Young Authors

1 Comment

When you reach a certain age, it’s all too easy to become a little bit crotchety on the subject of the younger generation. The transition to curmudgeonliness happens not long after a moment of awakening, such as when a store clerk at a cosmetic counter suggests you purchase an anti-aging serum, or when a young person mentions a bit of slang you’ve never even heard of–even though you’re an editor and thought you were conversant with all the latest usage. Your relative oldness stands out in dramatic relief at such moments. You can no longer pass yourself off as young, nor can you pretend to truly understand the young. The gulf between you and the younger generation seems vast and insurmountable, which paves the way for becoming a critical such-and-such.

To the most curmudgeonly among us, young people are inevitably rude, lazy, undisciplined, distracted, and illiterate. But come now, are they really? I confess to being at a certain disadvantage when it comes to the subject of the young, as I don’t have children of my own, and I spend much of my time around other middle-aged people, many of whom are also childless. But what I can tell you is that none of those adjectives even remotely apply to some of the young authors who have crossed my path recently.

One author I worked with earlier this year is still in high school, while another recently graduated from university. Both have written sizeable and ambitious novels in the fantasy and science fiction genres. Both are respectful, gracious, and generally delightful to deal with. And as far as literacy is concerned, both have very successfully absorbed the fundamentals of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, which speaks well for both them and the educational system. But more than that, it’s as if they’ve already read all those books I’ve been reading about how to write good fiction and have even memorized the rules–they really know how to structure a novel. And doing so seems to come very naturally to them. Perhaps it’s not so much that they’ve read about the rules as that they’ve already read a lot of fiction in their young lives and have absorbed it at such a deep level that they instinctively know how to write it.

That anyone so young manages to write a novel, let alone a good one, astonishes me. Beyond their obvious literary ability, these young authors have ambition, patience, and discipline in spades–not to mention a buoyant optimism to carry them through the long process of writing and publishing their work. Looking back at my much younger self, I know I wasn’t half as impressive as they are. I certainly wish them well, and I can’t wait to see where their writing will take them.

Email, RSS Follow
Writing and Editing

Dialogue Tags: The Perils of Spitting and Hissing

2 Comments

For the uninitiated, dialogue tags (or speaker attributions) are those words that accompany dialogue to identify a speaker–like “Oscar said” and “Lucinda asked.” When handled well, they pleasantly and unobtrusively do their job of telling the reader who said what. And that is all they’re required to do.

If you read about how to craft good fiction, you’ll discover that the prevailing wisdom these days indicates that you use the most invisible verb possible in dialogue tags. And for the people in the know, such as Renni Browne and Dave King, authors of the marvellously useful book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, the verb of choice for dialogue tags is said.

You may scoff. Isn’t said a little boring? Won’t a page full of them lull readers to sleep?  With so many delicious verbs in the English language to choose from, why is it not considered appropriate to fling them around with wild abandon while writing your dialogue tags? Why shouldn’t your characters hiss, spit, squeak, roar, growl, shriek, sneer, grunt, laugh, smile, chuckle, grimace, breathe, tease, or scoff their way through their dialogue if you damn well want them to? (Or, in cases where you feel they’ve taken over your book, if they damn well want to?)

There are good reasons for not succumbing to the allure of using colourful dialogue tags. The first is that they’re a distraction from what your characters are actually saying. When you accompany your dialogue with “Gerald spat” and “Valerie squeaked,” it’s as if someone’s standing beside the character as they’re speaking, jumping up and down while waving a big flag. It makes it awfully hard to focus on the dialogue when such flashy verbs are jumping out at you and capturing your attention. In the case of such tags, the reader is distracted from the content by the mechanics of writing, which should never be the case.

Another very good reason for not using these tags is that they often describe actions that are physically impossible for people to carry out. Take, for example, the following: Sybil spat, “But I told you not to use those words!” I think you will agree that it’s not actually possible for Sybil to spit the dialogue. Nor it possible to roar, hiss, squeak, or growl words, and these verbs seem especially inappropriate in connection to human speech since they are best used to describe animal sounds. Using them automatically makes prose more melodramatic and characters more cartoonish, which I’m guessing is something writers would rather avoid. As well, it’s best to avoid all sorts of verbs that are associated with speech such as interrogated, commanded, stated, inquired, divulged, expostulated, affirmed, and objected, just to name a few. When editing, I generally reject these as being much too obtrusive for dialogue tags and go with a plainer choice.

Of course, there are certainly other verbs besides said that have their place in speaker attributions. Characters can easily reply, ask, shout, or whisper when these particular words apply. And I must admit that sometimes I’ve read one of the more exotic verbs in a dialogue tag and realized that it works beautifully and that nothing else really seems right. What I’m saying is that some flexibility is called for when considering dialogue tags. But as a general rule, keep it plain and simple. And repeat after me: said is a perfectly good word.

 

 

Email, RSS Follow
Writing and Editing

Usage Misdemeanours: Flair and Flare

2 Comments

Discussions of taste and style often bring to light confusion over the homophone pair flair and flare. In its advertising, a restaurant might claim to have  a “flare” for French cuisine, leading word-nerd readers to joke about the possibility that there are flaming dishes on the menu. But in most cases, there’s no need for alarm since no food is on fire–flare is simply being used when flair is intended, which is the usual sort of misuse when it comes to this pair.

The definition of flair is fairly straightforward and frequently concerns matters of style. Someone who dresses with flair, for example, is stylish and fashionable by current standards, or has a style all their own. Those with flair display an aesthetic sensibility and a natural ability to be discriminating and discerning. But the idea of flair extends beyond good taste to include certain specific talents and aptitudes unique to an individual. You may have a flair for any number of things, from growing orchids to dancing the tango. Flair is invariably a noun.

Flare has a great many more definitions than flair, and can be used as both a noun and a verb. A flare is often some sort of flame, usually a dazzlingly bright one that burns unpredictably. Flares can be flames that are distress signals or those that are dropped from aircraft to illuminate a target. Any device that produces such flames is also known as a flare. In the context of fire, flare is also used as a verb, so a flare itself could be said to flare suddenly, bursting into a sudden and dramatic blaze.

A related use of flare comes from the field of astronomy. There are solar flares, which are sudden increases or decreases in the brightness of a star that result in obvious changes in the magnitude of such stars. In photography, we also have flare, generally considered a bad thing, as it refers to undesirable illumination in a photograph or negative, often visible as a foggy-looking patch, resulting from reflection within a lens.

Beyond its associations with light, flare in used as both a noun and a verb in the context of an emotional response. A sudden outburst of emotion, usually anger, is a flare or a flare-up, and your temper can be said to flare. Similarly, angry, aggressive and contagious sorts of diseases are also said to have flare-ups or to flare up. All these states are anything but subtle, and flare is also a verb that means to display something in a conspicuous way. You could, for example, flare your red scarf at someone to attract attention.

The meanings I’ve mentioned so far often involve sudden, dramatic changes or motion, but flaring can also be gentler in nature. Something that flares may widen gradually from its top or bottom. This sort of flaring is often used to describe clothing, so a dress may be said to flare slightly at the hemline. Not to be forgotten are those pants with trouser legs that widen below the knee–the ubiquitous flares or bell-bottomed pants of the ’60s and ’70s. They have been revived in less extreme forms ever since and in their current incarnation are called boot-cut pants.

I haven’t completely exhausted all the possible meanings of flare here, but I have covered the major ones. When determining whether to use flair versus flare, here are a few points to keep in mind. If it’s a verb you need in the sentence, then by default the word you must use is flare. However, if you need a noun, then deciding is a little trickier. If you’re talking about taste, style, or a particular talent or aptitude, then flair is unquestionably the word you want. If you’re talking about flames, lights, or tempers, then flare should be your choice. And no matter how much flair they may possess, trousers with wide legs are always flares.

Email, RSS Follow