Microsoft Word: Inserting Symbols

Ever wonder how documents manage to have text that isn’t on your keyboard? Ever wonder…

Are You a Better Writer than a Fifth Grader?

After freelance proofreading, editing, and writing and doing small-group literacy and math intervention for the…

3 Warnings for Using a Thesaurus

In my teaching and editing experience, there are three basic thesaurus user types: EFLs, native…

Plotting Fiction: Beginnings and Endings

A story demands resolution. The promise of a solution to a mystery, or generally an…

How to Capitalize Medicine

In today’s post, I will write about a related topic: capitalization of medication names. The…

“Was Done by the Researcher” Must Die

Plotting Fiction: Get Your Facts Straight, Part 2

There’s an old adage in journalism: “If your mother says she loves you, check it…

How to Capitalize Disease Names

If you’ve ever been confused about how to capitalize disease names, read on. In today’s…

Plotting Fiction: Get Your Facts Straight, Part 1

Inaccuracies creep in when we are in the heat of creation. We take shortcuts because…

An Easy Guide to Articles: A, An, and The

There are three articles: “a,” “an,” and “the.” All of them function as adjectives.

Simple Guide to Using “If” or “Whether”

The English language is full of words that seem to perform the same function but…

Tips to Help Children Write Better

With school having started already some places and about to start in others, many parents…

Plotting Fiction: Keeping Track of Time, Part 2

Reconciling objective and subjective chronology might seem simpler in fiction: after all, the author controls…

Commonly Confused Homophones

Ah, the double-edged sword of spell-check. That little red squiggle under misspelled words can be…

Plotting Fiction: Keeping Track of Time, Pt 1

Our heroes live in a world, and despite all their antics, life goes on for…

Bad Parallelism, Good Parallelism

“Parallelism” means the same parts of a sentence must be of the same type. But…

Implicit Racism in Writing

Implicit racism is woven into the fabric of American society. It plays a part in…

Plotting Fiction: Keeping Your Story Straight

Keeping your story straight is mostly a matter of holding yourself accountable.

Cell Phones and Why We Write

Civility is the world’s second-best social lubricant, and from the first day of their public…

5 Reasons Assembly Instructions Fall Apart

If you find yourself in the unlucky position of writing a manual or set of…