Professional and academic documents demand the principle of “Keep It Simple.” While some document styles can take a more flexible approach, academic documents in particular should always be simple, easy to read, and visually uncluttered. Let’s take a look at why.

I recommend writing fanfiction for people who need to work on their dialogue skills, pacing, and character development.

I describe some areas of confusion about capitalization I have often observed in my work here at ProofreadingPal.

There are word pairs, even trios, whose meanings are similar, but distinct. The shades of difference are subtler, and so sometimes even educated speakers find themselves unsure of which is correct.

PDFs can be scary for an editor. After all, you can’t just turn on Track Changes as in Word and go to town. The entire point of a PDF is that it always looks the same. So how do you make changes or suggestions?

One of the hardest irregular verbs in English to use properly is “to lie,” and another is “to lay.” The verbs have a multitude of overlapping meanings, and then they’re conjugated differently while being spelled the same. However, you can become an expert if we take it one step at a time. And we’ll start with the hardest one.

Your personal statement will help your application if it shows that you’re a well-qualified individual and nicely suited for the program you’re applying to. Your personal statement will hurt your application if it’s poorly written or demonstrates a lack of academic focus. But never fear, Proofreading Pulse is here with tips for crafting a personal statement that will help you no matter where you’re applying.

Canadian English is unique. Neither American nor wholly British, it’s a robust hybrid of British Commonwealth English and cross-border influences. Before we can assess the Canadian dialect, though, we need to understand how global languages become localized, and for that we need to examine the origins of American English.

I have been noticing recently that willy-nilly use of upper- and lowercase letters is pretty common, although it is far from correct. So I thought it time to review some basic capitalization rules. Here are the types of words that should be capitalized:

Despite its occasional bad rap, writing fanfic is a great way to improve your writing. I’ll go so far as to say that anyone looking to write original fiction can learn quite a few things from giving fanfiction a spin.

Another way to get your brain to take a fresh look at what you’ve written is to print it out and read it on actual paper. These days, most of us do our writing on the computer; we type and the words appear on the screen. By printing out your document and reading it with a pen in hand, you may notice problems, errors, and quirks that you didn’t see on the screen.

So much can be done with good comment boxes here’s an old-fashioned list of dos and don’ts.

When it comes to writing well, you’d be hard-pressed to find better advice than that contained in William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White’s The Elements of Style. First published in 1935, this slim volume provides wise guidance still relevant in today’s world of instant communication.

These rules do not arise organically but are handed down by self-appointed arbiters usually speaking for an affiliation of publishers. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), for instance, serves as the argument-ender for hundreds of magazines and newspapers.

Grammar is as subject to fashion as everything else. So to keep you up to date, here are five grammar rules that rule no more.

In today’s post, I look at some specific grammatical constructions and how hyphens are used in them.

The first time I saw Office Suite’s spell check function, I just about cried with joy. (Shut up. I’m a nerd.) Gone forever would be the days of having words like “metaphore” and “ocurrance” litter my papers and irritate my professors, dragging down my grades and self-esteme . . . uh, esteem.

Recently I’ve gotten a little obsessed with compounds words and the hyphen, that little punctuation mark that can cause so much confusion. My interest in this started when I was looking into the spelling of the word “healthcare.” Oops! I mean “health care”… or “health-care”?

Whether you’re a writer, professional editor, or client for a professional editor, you can always benefit from a little self-editing. However, we’re all too close to our own work; we know what we meant to say, and this can get scrambled up with what is actually on the page.

Typing two blank spaces at the end of every sentence is one such habit. Lots of people still do it because it used to be a rule, and that’s how they were taught. And they, in turn, pass the “rule” along to the next generation of writers. But for most kinds of writing, the two-space habit is, in fact, no longer the rule.