This is the site of Mark Schaefer, attorney, author, educator, pastor, language scholar, and wordsmith. This site contains content from Mark’s writings, sermons, articles, and other material.

Wordsmith Your Writing

Good writing is more important than ever. At a time when texting, social media, and other informal forms have risen to prominence, good writing can help you stand out.

If you need help with your writing—whether simple proofreading or in-depth editing—I can help. I also offer translation services from and into English for a number of languages.

Learn more

Sites

Visit some of Mark’s other sites:

Book site

The Certainty of Uncertainty

Mark’s 2018 book, a reflection on the unavoidable nature of uncertainty and why embracing uncertainty and doubt are vital for a healthy faith and meaningful life.

Blog

Some, uh, Theologica

Mark’s long-running blog of sermons, theological reflections, and occasional linguistic musings.

Site

Original Sentence

A site to record and celebrate the creativity of human language by allowing visitors to submit sentences they believe have never been uttered before.

Creative writing project

The Lands Under the Sun

An attempt to create the world’s first (or at least best) crowd-sourced fantasy epic. Members of the site can help to develop the world or write stories that take place in this world.

Recent Posts

• 
  What’s Going on with You and I?
  It’s hard to see changes in language in realtime. Such things are usually gradual and only after a couple of generations have gone by can you really see the changes that have taken place. However, recently, I’ve noticed an emerging phenomenon regarding the way people use pronouns that suggested to me that I was witnessing
• 
  Immortality
  A 100 Word Story So many slingshot pilots die young looking for immortality. I’d become a celebrity—the first to slingshot past the Oort Cloud using only an assist from Jupiter. This was to be my masterpiece: I’d use the black hole at Cygnus X-1 to propel myself to the next star system. It would take
• 
  What Goes Around
  The Emperor was angry. Sitting in the anteroom to the throne room, waiting to be summoned, Marcus knew that much.  It was not like the Emperor to summon a provincial governor unless something had gone wrong.  Could it be the number of executions?  Marcus’ count was undoubtedly high, but the Emperor wasn’t precisely a squeamish
• 
  The Democracy Tree
  A neglected tree box on New Hampshire Avenue provided an opportunity over the Fourth of July weekend to save a tree and witness to a community for DC voting rights.
• Between You and I: Hypercorrection or Sign of Things to Come?
  Among purists it would be hard to find a construction more grating on the ear than the use of the nominative case (used for the subjects of a sentence) where the objective case (used, appropriately, for the direct or indirect object) should be. Hearing phrases like, “Just between you and I” and “Give it to

Featured Posts

Below are some highlights from some of Mark’s writing on this site and elsewhere.