Sooner or later it will show up in your mailbox, printed on Santa stationery neatly folded into an origami bell: the first family newsletter of the season.

Whether you respond with a grin or a groan will depend on a number of factors--not least of which is your tolerance for exclamation points and second-hand good cheer. Is a holiday newsletter a jolly way of staying in touch with now distant friends? Or an impersonal exercise in shameless self-promotion?

Whatever your sentiments, this newsletter will certainly challenge them. It's from your brave friend Jocelyn Dunbar, writing on behalf of husband Clifford and children Kevin, Jacki, Kyle, and Khe Sahn:

Many of you, our friends and family, are probably taken aback by this, our annual holiday newsletter. You've read of our recent tragedy in the newspapers and were no doubt thinking that, what with all of their sudden legal woes and "hassles," the Dunbar clan might just stick their heads in the sand and avoid this upcoming holiday season altogether!!

You're saying, "There's no way the Dunbar family can grieve their terrible loss and carry on the traditions of the season. No family is that strong," you're thinking to yourselves.

Well, think again!!!!!!!!!!!

Except for the exclamations and cliches, the Dunbars' holiday letter promises to be disturbingly unconventional--and so we read on. For once, a family newsletter does not disappoint. Bleak, offensive, and perversely amusing, "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" is anything but boring.

One of 12 short pieces in the David Sedaris collection Holidays on Ice, 2nd edition (Little, Brown and Company, 2008), Jocelyn's letter manages to avoid the number one fault of such compositions: endless, mind-numbing bragging. Perhaps that's because the Dunbar family has so little left to brag about.

We share Jocelyn's surprise at finding out that during a stint in Vietnam Clifford "accidentally planted the seeds for Khe Sahn." Wearing "nothing but a pair of hot pants and a glorified sports bra," Khe Sahn arrived at the Dunbar house "speaking only the words 'Daddy,' 'Shiny,' and 'Five dollar now.'"

We hear about son Kyle, who "keeps to himself, spending many hours in his bedroom, where he burns incense, listens to music, and carves gnomes out of soap." And we learn that Jackelyn has had a baby, named Satan Speaks--one "prone to hideous rashes, a twenty-four-hour round-the-clock screamer."

If you're looking for something dark and humorous to help you feel better about your own quirky family, read David Sedaris. But if instead you'd like some advice on how to compose a family letter that friends will read and enjoy, consider our Tips for Composing a Holiday Newsletter.

Image: Holidays on Ice, 2nd edition, by David Sedaris (Little, Brown and Company, 2008)

I hate to sound like a fussbudget, but it's right there above the fold in today's newspaper:

Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberries--and Boston Lager? As nationwide interest in craft beers grows, more Americans are making like the Pilgrims this Thanksgiving by adding complimentary brews to the menu.

"Complimentary brews"? Only if microbreweries have started giving the stuff away. What the writer probably had in mind was "complementary brews"--beers that go well with a turkey dinner.

This slip-up (immune to the powers of the spell checker) reminded me of a little verse I used to give my students:

You might devise a scheme to sell a device,
Or advise a friend to seek better advice.
You can lose a bet and loosen a tie,
Lay down the law and lie down to die.

Of course, these are just a few of the hundreds of words in English that are easily confused because of similarities in sound and spelling.

But there's really no need to lose your mind over homophones. My advice is to study the examples, definitions, and exercises at our extensive Glossary of Commonly Confused Words. Then proceed (not precede) to the Review Quiz.

It's all a lot easier than you might think. Cheers!

Today's Commonly Confused Words:

• Advice and Advise
• A Lot (Much, Many)
• Complement and Compliment
• Device and Devise
• Its and It's
• Lay and Lie
• Loose and Lose
• Precede and Proceed
• Than and Then
• Their, There, and They're

In our Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms, you'll find a name for . . .

• a modifying word that undermines or contradicts the meaning of the word, phrase, or clause it accompanies (such as "genuine leatherette"): weasel word


• an utterance that has the form of a question but the force of a statement (Are you crazy?): queclarative


• a clause that contains a subordinate (or embedded) clause: matrix


• a simplified version of English spelling that omits letters not needed to represent pronunciation (as in lernng to read and rite): Cut Spelling


• two words that differ in only one sound (such as writer and rider): minimal pair


• a word or name that is secretly used to refer to a particular person, place, activity, or thing (such as Radiance and Rosebud, the Secret Service code names for President Obama's daughters): cryptonym


• the view that grammatical constructions do not have strict boundaries but occur on a continuum: squish


• a nonstandard verb form (usually the present participle) in which the base is preceded by the prefix a- (such as Bob Dylan's "I'm a-thinkin' and a-wonderin' all the way down the road"): a-verbing

You'll find examples and explanations of these and over 1,000 other language-related words and phrases in our Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms.

More Words About Words:

• Gadzooks! There's a Name for It (Part Four)
• There's a Name for It: 20 Weird and Witty Language-Related Terms
• Name That -nym
• Twenty Rhetorical Terms That We Never Learned in School

How far should we go when editing someone else's prose--in particular, the work of a student applying for admission to a college or university? To put it another way, when does editing cross an ethical boundary and turn into co-writing or ghostwriting?

In his New York Times column a couple of years ago, "freelance ethicist" Randy Cohen considered one teacher's dilemma:

As a high-school English teacher, I am frequently asked to proofread and make rewriting suggestions for students' college-application essays. I decline on the grounds that admissions officers assume that these essays accurately represent the students' work. Other teachers argue that our students lose the editing advantage many students receive. Is it ethical for me to read student essays?
("No Edit," The New York Times Magazine, May 20, 2007)

It's an issue that concerns parents as well as teachers: should we go ahead and correct the problems we spot in a student's personal statement, or merely point them out?

Without hesitating, Cohen advocated a non-invasive approach:

A teacher may read student essays but not write them. You should eschew anything as hands-on as editing or proofreading and instead find ways to guide students toward producing first-rate work that is their own. . . . That is, help a student identify a problem, but let the student solve it.

But not everyone agrees. Certainly not the owners of online editing services, where, for $640 ($830 if it's a rush job), a student can receive what one outfit calls the Complete Package: "an upfront, wide-ranging interview, an outline, and after you write it, editing your essay."

Or consider the kind of assistance provided by the "Ivy-League educated editors and writers" at another site, the "best admission essay and personal statement development service on the Web":

Our most popular service, and the most unique offering of its kind on the Internet, our custom model essay development service provides you with an actual model essay drafted from scratch, completely tailored to your own personal facts. Through our proprietary Biograph(TM) process, our experienced writers gather all your pertinent personal facts, and turn them into a completely unique, one-of-a-kind model essay or personal statement.

With that kind of service available (and with career goals and scholarships at stake), is it naive--or perhaps even unfair--to keep our fingers off the keyboard and deprive students of the "editing advantage"?

Of course the guiding hand of a teacher or parent is not the same as a ghostwritten essay or a major revision peddled by a pricey (and dicey) editing outfit. But where do we draw the line? At what point does guiding turn into rewriting? What's the fair way to respond to a student's request for help--and what's the right thing to do?

We'd like to hear your thoughts on the ethics of editing student work. Just click on "comments" below.

More About Composing and Editing:

• Compose a Personal Statement
• Editing Checklist
• Top Ten Editing Tips for Business Writers
• An Editor's Five Rules of Thumb

Image: Randy Cohen, ethics columnist for The New York Times and author of The Good, the Bad & the Difference: How to Tell Right From Wrong in Everyday Situations (Doubleday, 2002)