Go from short to long!
Rearranging elements of a sentence “from short to long, from simple to compound, increases the ability of the reader to understand them,” says Bruce Ross-Larson in Edit Yourself: A Manual for everyone who works with words, one of my favorite editing books. Ross-Larson has three related rules. First, count the syllables. This will let you […]
MISTAKE MONDAY for December 27: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Can’t find it? Try reading the item out loud. Please post your answer as a comment. I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading.
Use calendar invitations to keep your experts on schedule
Do you ever struggle to get your authors and subject-matter experts to return their edits and comments on time? I’ve learned a new way to nudge them. This year a new person took over coordinating an editing project that I’d worked on before. I was surprised that the project ran more or less on schedule, […]
Can you use numerals at the start of a sentence?
One of the first writing rules I learned was that I can’t use numerals to start a sentence. But in recent years, my certainty about that rule has been shaken. Headlines can start with numerals First, I learned that it’s OK to start an article headline with a numeral, at least in Associated Press (AP) […]
MISTAKE MONDAY for November 29: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? This is an example from my blog. Yes, I make careless mistakes, too, including a mistake that I later fixed. As you see in this item, I initially spelled Emmy Favilla’s last name with one l instead of two. I post Mistake Monday items partly to […]