Writing is never easy; even professional writers and academics, people who have chosen careers with hefty writing requirements, can struggle mightily to get it done.

There’s no rule saying that academic articles can’t be written in muscular prose, no law that business writing can’t have a sense of forward momentum and the occasional memorable line.

Here are the top ten changes to the APA manual, selected because these are the issues professional editors are probably going to encounter most often.

The kinds of figurative language described in this installment are not appropriate for most academic writing, where panache must occasionally be sacrificed for the sake of clarity. For less rigorous types of informational writing, such as business communications or informal reports, they represent ways to add color and spice to your message.

You should shun discriminatory language as you should shun discrimination; doing so also allows your message to reach the broadest audience and lends credibility to your words.

In this post we cover the apostrophe rules that are, for lack of a better word, downright wacky. If you’re going to be an expert, you’ll have to memorize these individually.

This time, let’s go way out there and look at a pair of related poetic devices that seem, at first glance, hopelessly roundabout and exotic: metonymy and synecdoche.

As an editor, I am naturally sensitive to language matters, and I took this criticism seriously. I’ve made an effort to modernize my pronoun usage, and in today’s blog I’ll provide tips to avoid gender bias in your pronoun use.

Lets get into the complexities of apostrophes when dealing with singular and plural nouns.

ProofreadingPal’s 2019 Holiday Hours

The guidebooks’ prohibition on colorful language is really just a plea for clarity. Used sparingly, in commonly understood expressions or for illustrative purposes, simile and metaphor can make your prose more understandable and memorable.

This time, let’s deal with the fact that emojis are still not OK in professional and some types of personal communication and consider some good alternatives.

In research writing, the difference between hypothetical and factual statements is critical; your choice of verb helps make the distinction. In today’s post, I’ll provide a review of the forms and use of modal auxiliary verbs and conditional statements and some basic tips to help you use them effectively in research writing.

Even though the older generations love to dump on them and elites love to complain about them, emojis are a useful, necessary advancement in modern language.

In today’s post I’ll discuss some AP basics and differences from other style guides you’ll need to know to use this style effectively.

Rhyme can be understated, and it comes in more flavors than you might think. Repeated sounds are the key to crafting phrases that are catchy without seeming contrived. Let’s explore.

Adding in a second (or third or eighth) subject or object or modifier doesn’t change the case of the subject or object.

The glorious and intimidating thing about the English language is its bounty of options. Whatever we want to say, there are multiple ways to say it. It is our choices that render our language straightforward or confusing, memorable or boring, elegant or awkward.

In today’s post, I’ll provide examples of reference listings including DOIs and URLs in APA, MLA, and the Chicago Manual of Style. I’ll point out some differences among these styles, and I’ll provide some information about what to do with electronic sources found using a database.

This time in our plagiarism avoidance master class, we’ll discuss some even murkier areas dealing with the difference between copyright violations and plagiarism and how to refer to common sources.