Writing

Ben Yagoda, a teacher and writer, is bringing a work to the Festival of Books that should be of particular interest to the aspiring writers in attendance. His new book is "How to Not Write Bad," a conversational how-to that can help point the way to avoiding the pitfalls of bad writing. Yagoda studied at Yale and is the author of "Will Rogers: A Biography. " He is a professor at the University of Delaware, and some of the questions that led to his book have come up in his classes.

Dreams defy even the dreamer, slipping away as stealthily as they arrive in a mind made credulous by sleep. But what if scientists could read our dreams by using the most advanced medical imaging machines and employing the sophisticated algorithms that flag fraudulent transactions among millions of credit card purchases? Researchers in Japan have taken an early step toward this chimerical goal by training computers to recognize the images flitting through the minds of sleepers in the earliest stages of dreaming.

Roger Ebert, the Pulitzer Prize-winning movie critic whose gladiatorial "thumbs-up, thumbs-down" assessments turned film reviewing into a television sport and whose passion for independent film helped introduce a new generation of filmmakers to moviegoers, has died. He was 70. Ebert, who had battled cancer in recent years, died Thursday in Chicago, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, where he had been film critic for 46 years. He had undergone several surgeries to remove cancerous tumors from his thyroid and salivary glands, ultimately losing his jaw and speaking voice to the disease.

For years, people who read Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's novels assumed she was born in India. She wrote about swamis, social climbers, duplicitous landlords and other characters from the Indian bourgeoisie who inevitably found themselves colliding with curious visitors from the West. But Jhabvala was a Westerner herself: a German Jew displaced by war to England, who married an Indian man and settled in his country. She absorbed enough of subcontinental culture to portray it with clarity and comic sensibility in books that earned her comparisons to Jane Austen.

In the latest issue of GQ, writer Jessica Pressler followed the superstar Swedish DJ Avicii around for a few nights leading up to his New Year's Eve show. The result was a long profile that attempted to document what, exactly, today's crop of megawatt DJs are actually doing onstage at a marquee performance, and what a once-underground culture looks like once a few years' worth of insane money and attention have soaked in. The article was especially notable for a few quotes where Pressler says Avicii admits that much of his set is pre-planned, and that he's mostly just mixing volumes and a few effects onstage.

Before students hunker down to take their SATs this spring, many will have an array of tools to help them with the exam. Flash cards, study guides and - cursive handwriting? For many, cursive handwriting is a thing of the past, an archaic method taught in the days before keyboards and touch screens. But some argue that writing longhand could help in placement exams. National core standards don't require cursive to be taught to students, but some states, including California, Alabama and Georgia, have included cursive handwriting in their state requirements in early elementary grades, something supporters say should be more widespread.

Dan Turner, a Times editorial writer for nearly a decade who was known for his sharply witty observations on a broad range of subjects, died Saturday at his Los Angeles home. He was 49. The cause was pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed two years ago, said his wife, Jocelyn. "No matter what the subject - and no matter how nerdy - he approached it with the same extraordinary voice and sense of humor," Nicholas Goldberg, editor of The Times' editorial pages, said in an e-mail to the staff announcing Turner's death.

This post has been corrected. See note below for details. Renée Taylor is a very funny lady known for such comedic roles as Eva Braun in Mel Brooks' 1968 classic "The Producers," Fran Drescher's ultimate Jewish mother on "The Nanny" and Brian Benben's ultimate Jewish mother on HBO's "Dream On. " But her career didn't start out that way. FOR THE RECORD: Renee Taylor: A profile of actress Renee Taylor in the March 27...

Minority and women writers have made modest job gains in the television industry but have a long way to go before the playing field is level. So concludes the latest analysis from the Writers Guild of America, West, which reviewed employment patterns for 1,722 writers working on 190 broadcast and cable television shows during the 2011-2012 season.  The study focuses on three groups that have traditionally been underemployed in the TV industry:...

Snooki and fiance Jionni LaValle baptized their son on Palm Sunday and her partner in crime JWoww served as the little guy's godmother.  "Lorenzo is finally baptized! He did so good #proudparents," she tweeted Sunday. Snooki, 25, whose real name is Nicole Polizzi, posted several pics of the fete on Instagram over the weekend. The "Snooki & JWoww" star and "proud mommy" was beyond eager to share her little guy's christening celebration "Proud parents today," the petite reality star posted with a pic of herself and LaValle dressed in their Sunday best.