Yesterday (at the time of this writing), John McIntyre, one of the titans of the editing profession, posted the following on his Facebook page, courtesy of The Poke:* The Poke’s caption was, "The kind of headline a journalist waits their whole life to write…."...
“This just needs a light proofread.” “Can you look this over? I know it doesn’t need much.” Regardless of what kind of writing it is, you have probably been working on it even when you aren’t sitting at the computer with it. You’re imagining what to write next while...
Right now in my editing group, we are talking about an article that just came out called “8 Words to Seek and Destroy in Your Writing”. One of the words that the author wanted to destroy was the word that. Like many of my colleagues, my response to that article was...
The death of one animal went viral this summer. A lion was tortured to death and mutilated for fun by a dentist from Minnesota. But what does this have to do with language? With editing? Cultural Shifts Against the Maltreatment of Animals Cecil was not the only animal...
Simple language creates trust, saves time, and prevents confusion. There’s a whole body of law devoted to the issue of ambiguity in contracts, and those contracts were drafted by lawyers. Nevertheless, some of them are so ambiguous that they give rise to expensive...
A boy has never wept … nor dashed a thousand kim.* Let's talk about powerhouse authors and their editors. Even if they published some of the greatest masterpieces of the twentieth century, these authors almost certainly hired editors. For example, consider E.L....