The “Misunderstood” Scare Quotes

Scare quotes should rarely be used. For one thing, they frequently send the message that…

Comparison and Contrast: Commonly Confused Words

Expressions of comparison and contrast are a vital part of language. It’s useful to be…

2 Tips for Professional-Looking Fiction

The following come from my own mentors, most of them editors for publishing houses. I’ve…

MLA’s 8th Edition: Nothing and Everything Have Changed

The authors of the leading academic style guide for the humanities write that “The problem…

How to Avoid Fragments

A sentence is a complete thought, almost always with a subject and a verb. At…

5 Times to Write Good Transitions

There are many transition words and phrases out there. I’ll highlight some of the most…

We’re Hiring Work-from-Home Proofreaders

ProofreadingPal LLC paid out over $471K to work-from-home contract proofreaders in 2016, and we're looking…

“I Feel Badly”: Argh! No, You Don’t!

People like to say, “I feel badly," but it's wrong. Let’s look at exactly why…

Affect vs. Effect: Commonly Confused Words

Let’s look at a word pairing that can trip up even experienced writers (and some…

Editing Grammar in Poetry

A good poetry editor fixes bad grammar just like a good prose editor does. But…

Keep Editors Separate in MS Word

Here’s a quick guide to how you restore individual editors to a document in Word…

Keep It Simple, Seriously!

Professional and academic documents demand the principle of “Keep It Simple.” While some document styles…

Does Fanfiction Improve Writing? Part 2

I recommend writing fanfiction for people who need to work on their dialogue skills, pacing,…

Avoiding Common Capitalization Errors

I describe some areas of confusion about capitalization I have often observed in my work…

Commonly Confused Words

There are word pairs, even trios, whose meanings are similar, but distinct. The shades of…

How to Edit PDFs

PDFs can be scary for an editor. After all, you can’t just turn on Track…

Lie vs. Lay vs. Lied vs. Laid vs. Lain

One of the hardest irregular verbs in English to use properly is “to lie,” and…

5 Tips for Personal Statements

Your personal statement will help your application if it shows that you’re a well-qualified individual…

Rules of Canadian English

Canadian English is unique. Neither American nor wholly British, it’s a robust hybrid of British…

Capitalization in APA, Chicago, MLA, and AP

I have been noticing recently that willy-nilly use of upper- and lowercase letters is pretty…