I hear this question quite a bit. I have been asked it by students of a short course I teach and I’ve heard it…
This week I am in love with …
Phoebe Snow and Charles Dickens Phoebe Snow: the poetry woman, exquisite vocal stylist, deft guitarist. Having a mini Phoebe festival thanks to some new (second…
So what is a split infinitive anyway? (The thirty-second answer.)
Spitting an infinitive is not a crime against grammar, but it’s not the most elegant construction either.
The joy of jargon busting
As I waded through columns and columns of similar dot points I rubbed my hands in glee; I hardly understood a word and my inner jargon-buster was looking forward to the brain-hurting challenge.
Dangling modifiers, squinting modifiers, what’s that about?
Understanding correct use of sentence modifiers can be helpful with your writing. Plus you will get word-nerd cred if you point them out when editing…
The gentle art of dictionary adding
I’ve invented a new word: togsulation. [togs-yoo-lay-shon] It’s the lovely cool you get when you wear your wet togs* home from the beach or the…
A full stop is your friend
if you find your fingers hovering indecisively over the keyboard, if you’ve rewritten that sentence countless times and still can’t get it right, if you are stuck beyond stuckness
The brain is quicker than the eye – why typos slip through
I had been communicating with a new client for a few days before he politely pointed out that name was spelt Bret, not Brett.
Why am I telling you this? Surely as an editor I should be more observant, I hear you say. And surely I should be keeping this kind of oversight to myself. You’re probably right, but I couldn’t resist. It’s a perfect example of how the eye can see one thing and the brain can see another.
The gentle art of dictionary browsing
I just had the occasion to use wherewithal in a sentence. What a lovely word. The Macquarie Dictionary defines it as follows: noun that wherewith…
Storytelling and digital transformation – who knew?
One of the great things about being an editor is that you get to learn new things from books you might not otherwise read. I…
The lovely week
So there’s Christmas and all the rush, bother and angst leading up to it … New Year’s Eve and all the hype, indecision and angst…
How to set up an out-of-office message in mac mail
I’m going to start from the end of the process so you don’t make the same blue I did and send multiple unsolicited out-of-office messages to your friends and clients (uber embarrassing…)