Dane and I share a desk perpetually covered in books with scintillating titles like The Careful Writer and Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins, in addition to the requisite Chicago Manual of Style and Garner’s Modern American Usage.

So perhaps it should not have come as a surprise to find, buried under the clean laundry on the couch today, a volume entitled Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Dane has been trying to get me to read this book for months. I was already starting to take offense at the implication that my writing lacks style (or maybe just clarity and grace), but now I have to wonder if the situation is so dire that he’s taken to hiding the book where he thinks I’ll find it and start reading it of my own accord.

Except he could only reasonably expect me to find it if I ever put away the laundry. Maybe next time he should try leaving it in the fridge.