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.

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.

Poetry is simply a way of thinking about language, a theory that words can be arranged for beauty as well as for meaning. There is no reason why even modest explanatory prose cannot be a pleasure to read. And it is beauty that gives prose its pleasure, distinguishing memorable writing from that which is merely functional.

You can write a passage of ornate prose, passive voice willy-nilly, telling without showing, and as long as the meaning is clear, it’s good writing, at least, for everyday purposes.

In this blog, we’ll dig deeper into matters of formatting in Christian publishing, paying particular attention to the complicated issue of capitalization.

If you’re looking to get your Christian writing published professionally, though, it’s not enough to be an excellent writer moved by the Holy Spirit; you’ll also need to demonstrate that you can stick to professional publishing guidelines and standards.

even when used properly, figures of speech and idioms, what we might generally call “poetic language,” can be inappropriate for academic writing.

Quotes from outside sources are useful and necessary in research papers. If your paper includes a literature review in which you discuss your field’s relevant literature, you will use quotes to add clarity and precision to your summary and analysis.

Today, seeing as artists come in all manner of genders, and not many of us are Greco-Roman pagans, we can replace “female” with “Other” and “goddess” with “free agent” and see the Muse as very much alive and well in an artist’s life.

The physical sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry, genetics, biological sciences, astronomy) often rely on CSE referencing, a style created and updated by the Council of Scientific Editors.

The whole point of grammar is that the audience shouldn’t have to guess at what you’re trying to say. Missing vocative commas deeply change the meaning of their sentences,

Titles come in many shapes and sizes, but they all have rules for formatting that you master with just a little work. Italics, quotes, even plain text: they all apply in certain situations. How do you know which is which?

Conversation is often more about phrases than words, to the point where we often use the phrases without thinking about the individual words at all.

Adverbs are modifiers used specifically to explain, describe, and define the way actions occur. They’re very simple things, which obviously means that using them can get complicated. Following these ten tips should help.

I spend a lot of my editing hours at ProofreadingPal dealing with wayward italics, so let’s talk about times when they are used properly and when they aren’t.

Let's talk about two marks that set off complementary information, phrases and clauses without which a sentence is incomplete: the colon and the semicolon.