Editing / Grammar / Usage / Proofreading / Usage

Pretty much everyone uses punctuation marks in their day-to-day life, whether it’s in texts, emails, professional communications, business writing, letters, birthday cards, notes…the list goes on and on! Periods, commas, question marks, exclamation points—these marks are familiar, and their usage is likely firmly cemented in your mind.   However, for some less-common punctuation marks/word treatments that perhaps don’t get used quite as often, it can become easy to mix them up...

Editing / Usage / Proofreading / Usage / Language & Editing

The ways that linguistic conventions change over time are sometimes obvious. New dialects and turns of phrase crop up, and many of them gradually change their meaning. Contextual changes throughout history often drive this kind of linguistic shift, but linguistic conventions also change in a subtler way. For instance, changes to the ways words are spelled tend to favour shortening rather than lengthening, presumably because people prefer...

Editing / Grammar / Usage / Style / Usage

Like any profession, editorial work involves keeping up with how professional standards and tools of the trade change over time. Unlike aviation standards, though, changes to editorial standards aren’t always big news, so it’s generally up to individual editors to try to keep on top of how and when the editorial goalposts have shifted. One of the most effective ways for writers and editors to make sure that...

Usage / Language & Editing

Inclusive writing is often confused with politically correct writing, but political correctness isn’t an author’s main goal when writing inclusively. Instead, inclusive writing seeks to limit reader alienation by avoiding the use of phrases and terms that include some demographics at the expense of excluding others.   When writing inclusively, a glossary of politically correct and incorrect terms could be used as a reference, but this glossary would act as...

Editing / Grammar / Usage / Usage

Punctuation marks are the signposts of prose. They indicate what’s important and where to pause. They add rhythm to your sentences. They help your readers follow the twists and turns of your thoughts.     But there are so many different kinds of punctuation marks that it can be tricky to decide which one to choose. Periods and commas are the most common, but trying to write with...

Usage / Language & Editing

Our blog series on confusables has remained popular over the years, so we thought it was time to post a new list. This one includes some explanations of confusables you’ve likely heard in the news recently.     Epidemic vs. Pandemic   Both these words are used for disease outbreaks, which I suppose is why it’s so easy to confuse them. The main difference between the two terms has to do...

Event / Usage / Language & Editing

October 2020 is drawing to a close, and pandemic-fatigued children and adults are turning to the warm embrace of holiday nostalgia to help ease their minds. With December still more than a month away, though, it’s anyone’s guess what kind of public health guidelines will be in place when Christmas and Hannukah arrive, so many are scaling back their festive celebrations in favour of online get-togethers.   Remembrance Day gatherings...

Usage / Technology / Language & Editing / Editing & Technologies

In this archived post from 2017, TEC Blogger Michael Bedford muses on how editors deal with an unending stream of technical and internet lingo, with new terms that seem to appear every other day. If you get stuck on what to do with terms like google and Wi-Fi, read on!   *****     Leafing through a copy of The Editorial Eye, Vol. 17, No. 9 from September 1994, I noticed a helpful article...

Writing / Writers Support Group / Usage

There are plenty of different approaches to writing. Some writers like to let the words pour out on the page and clean and shape them later; some outline and structure in detail and then fill in the framework; others might be writing up point-form ideas developed through team work or provided by someone else.   Regardless of style, in non-fiction and argumentative writing a writer needs to take a certain...

Usage / Language & Editing

Punctuation marks are the signposts of prose. They indicate what’s important and where to pause. They add rhythm to your sentences. They help your readers follow the twists and turns of your thoughts.   But there are so many different kinds of punctuation marks that it can be tricky to decide which one to choose. Periods and commas are the most common, but trying to write with...

Editing / Grammar / Usage / Style / Usage

It has been considered a usual style to shorten words in order to save time or space for some time now. Some of us will remember acronyms and initialisms used by bands (XTC, AC/DC, KMFDM, R. E. M. , U2,  the KLF, and the Notorious B. I. G. ), by television shows (M. A. S. ...

Writing / Writers Support Group / Usage / Language & Editing

Our blog series on confusables (a. k. a. , easily mixed up words) has remained popular throughout the years, so we thought we’d revive it and take a look at some more tricky word pairings!     I. e. vs. E. g. These are both Latin abbreviations that we often see switched around. “E. ...

Usage / Language & Editing

A few years ago, I decided to celebrate my love of Regency and Victorian literature by getting a tattoo of the word “ardent,” paying homage to Pride and Prejudice and Middlemarch and every other nineteenth-century novel that uses “ardent” as an evocative and powerful descriptor. My favourite university professor describes Middlemarch as a battle between the words “ardent” and “petty. ” And who can forget Mr. Darcy’s passionate...

Editing / Grammar / Usage / Style / Usage

In 2009, “unfriend” was the Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year, leading to teeth-gnashing of grammar purists across the world. How could this be? How did “unfriend” become a word at all, when “friend,” until not so long ago, wasn’t even a verb, but merely someone with whom you enjoyed spending time?   The English language, like all languages, is constantly evolving. “Unfriend” may still seem strange to us,...

Usage

    For centuries, questions of proper usage have provided editorial professionals fodder for debate. Although publishers’ styles are often defined by usage rules, such as never ending a sentence with a preposition, when exposed to a bit of research these rules are often revealed as illogical modern constraints placed on the historically flexible English language. That said, there are some usage rules that even staunch descriptivists must respect when...

Usage

    Punctuation marks are the signposts of prose. They indicate what’s important and where to pause. They add rhythm to your sentences. They help your readers follow the twists and turns of your thoughts.   But there are so many different kinds of punctuation marks that it can be tricky to decide which one to choose. Periods and commas are the most common, but trying to write with...

Usage

Commas, for any copy editor—or, for that matter, any copy writer—are a most familiar tool, as well as a potential source of frustration. Correcting punctuation for grammar and clarity is a key part of any copy editor’s job, but commas also play a role in shaping elements of writing that aren’t as simple as “correct” and “incorrect” usage. The comma, we’re often told, corresponds to a “slight pause”...

Usage

Back in September 2017, The Editing Company's own Barbara Kamienski wrote a great blog post about the linguistic challenges presented by subject-verb agreement. As Barbara points out, there are certain subjects that, especially when used in the same sentence, can make it difficult to determine whether verbs in any given construction should be plural or singular. One of Barbara's examples draws particular attention to this difficulty: None of the...

Usage

As a keen-eyed reader, you have no doubt noticed that those little horizontal lines between words and numbers come in varying lengths. As a keen-eyed typist, you'll also have noticed that your keyboard is equipped with only one key: the hyphen/minus key. And you may have observed that sometimes when you type in two hyphens to set off an interjection -- because you just know that a simple hyphen isn't up to...

Usage

I recently subscribed to the Globe and Mail for the Friday and Saturday editions. Friday's paper includes the Report on Business the last Friday of each month, and is a magazine I want to read more regularly. The first issue I received wasn't a disappointment (June 2017). The cover story took an inside look at the changeover of CEOs at Rogers and made for a compelling read....

Usage

    Few punctuation marks are misused as often as the comma. Sadly, many semi-professional or hobby writers of today seem to think that the comma is meant to signify vocal pauses. But, like any punctuation, the comma has specific uses: none of them involve noting vocal pauses.     In The Editorial Eye Vol. 25, No. 11, I saw a comma usage aptitude test entitled, “Be Conservative but Canny...

Usage

  It sometimes seems like there is a never-ending supply of words that are confusing in one way or another! There are homonyms, synonyms, words that are one letter off in spelling but couldn't be more different, and words that many people argue are not words at all. Every time I look up a new set of "confusables," I learn something new and interesting. I hope that you have...

Usage

  In the TEC office this month, we have been discussing a number of words and phrases that are easily confused and/or misused. So, for our blog this week, we thought we would explain three tricky word pairings, and we hope you find them helpful. For yet another explanation of two word pairings, check out our October newsletter.   Better than / more than / over This set of words is...

Usage

  As a keen-eyed reader, you have no doubt noticed that those little horizontal lines between words and numbers come in varying lengths. As a keen-eyed typist, you'll also have noticed that your keyboard is equipped with only one key: the hyphen/minus key. And you may have observed that sometimes when you type in two hyphens to set off an interjection -- because you just know that a simple hyphen isn't up to...