It’s a Modifier or a Hyphen, Not Both

Recently, I’ve been noticing an increase in the error of putting a hyphen between a…

Quick Intro to Dialects in Dialogue

what does the poetry of Burns have to do with writing and editing in Modern…

Can Writers Evade Bias, Sexism, and Racism?

Language is always changing to reflect material developments and changing ideas, so it’s important to…

5 Cancelled Terms & Sayings

Several phrases have been cancelled in recent years for good reasons, but there have been…

Crafting Plurals for Surnames and Joint Possessives

We’re used to speaking and writing as individuals; writing from the whole family means navigating…

6 Effective Tips for Office Bulletins and Memos

In today’s post, I’ll offer some tips for shorter internal office communications such as memos…

5 Times You Just Gotta Edit Quotes

So there you are, editing away, and you see a quote with an error in…

Quick Guide to Using Unicode Keystrokes for Diacritics

The curators of the standard have assigned keystroke shortcuts the diacritics, punctuation marks, and symbols…

Knowing Your Helpful Pronunciation Diacritical Marks

A frequent complaint of language learners of English is that the pronunciation of a word…

How to Write Believable Magic: Limitations

For this first post in the series, we’ll start with the most important aspect of…

How to Use Character Maps and Unicode

The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit based in Mountain View, California, was founded in 1991 to…

5 Student Writing Problems Found Everywhere

In today’s post, I will focus on the needs of one of our large client…

When and When Not to Use Em Dashes

The en dash is used mostly for number ranges (e.g., 1928–1972) and in some stylebooks…

Adding Diacritics with MS Word’s Insert Tab

Let’s say you’re writing a paper about the history of the United Nations during the…

Tips for Effective Digital Assignments

With any digital assignment, follow steps similar to those you would follow for a traditional…

Novels and Visual Effects in Film

Most new writers I’ve worked with share the crucial misconception that the way to write…

Foreign Loan Words, Diacritics, and AutoCorrect

A given word may or may not then “read” to the English-trained eye as foreign,…

Digital Assignments

This fall, many schools will be returning to in-person learning, but no matter what your…

Tips to Avoid Mixed Metaphors

Whether your first language is English or not, you must have mixed your metaphors a…

Foreign Loan Words and Diacritical Marks

Foreign loan words are brought into English more or less intact, either in their original…