Found this jewel through another blog. Being a wordsmith, I was delighted by each of these and I learned something, too! You should check out her blog, too, by clicking the link. I couldn’t find her name, but she’s a genius! By Bluebird of Bitterness Bar jokes for English majors A dangling participle walks into a […]
By Kathrin Herr Hey, author friends! I’m Kathrin, AKA The Writing Mechanic. In this blog post, I want to talk about one of my favorite ways to decide whether if an editor and author mesh well together: the glorious sample edit! When I communicate with authors about editing their books, I always suggest that we […]
by Sophie Dawson What’s the difference between then and than? Listen to people talking or read a hand written note sometime and you’ll invariably see these two words mixed up eventually. When proofreading, I see them confused many times. Then gives a connotation of time or place. The other than is a comparison. Seems pretty simple and straight […]
Common Word and Punctuation Errors That Can Change What You Mean By Sophie Dawson Proper word usage. Okay, what’s that? It’s using the correct word or words to convey the idea effectively. As a reader, author, and editor I notice so many common words used incorrectly not caught by editors and beta readers much less […]
Submitted by Gina Burgess I received this from friends at Pro-Edit. This is another reason why a different pair of eyes needs to edit your work. I was a newspaper editor, and these kinds of gaffes are so easy to make when you are focused on quickly getting the story out, or trying to […]
by Belinda Forgy We all know an adjective is used to describe a noun and I don’t want to turn this into an English lesson, but I do want to emphasize how important the use of adjectives are in a story. Descriptive words are what paints the picture in your reader’s mind. You want them […]
by Adam Swiger To use the Oxford comma, or not to use the Oxford comma? For that matter, is the comma in the previous sentence necessary? And, how do we know when a hyphen is necessary and when it isn’t? Of course, we know that particular rules and particular style guides matter, especially in the […]
by Margaret Welwood First let me dedicate this post to my mother, the Loyal Keeper of the Apostrophe in her seniors’ building. Mom was happy there, and she appreciated the help and companionship of the caring and competent staff. However, many of these fine people did not speak English as their first language, and the […]
