Language is always changing to reflect material developments and changing ideas, so it’s important to frequently revisit and update use of words, expressions, and language structures that may convey meanings we don’t intend and that may alienate readers or listeners. In today’s post, I will discuss some more words and expressions you may want to leave out of your language due to their histories in racism or sexism.

Several phrases have been cancelled in recent years for good reasons, but there have been no good phrases to replace them. This gap in appropriate language can leave those who don't mean to offend scrambling. The sayings were just so darn useful.

The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit based in Mountain View, California, was founded in 1991 to compile the various ad hoc systems used in different companies and locations and institute a truly global, cross-platform standard, meaning that a given code point will correspond with the same glyph in any application, search engine, or operating system.

Writing on a specialized topic for nonspecialists can be a challenge for writers of all ages, and writers often face the task of writing to an audience outside their field. In today’s post I’ll offer some tips to help you write clearly and usefully for a broader audience even if your topic is very narrow.

For readability and clarity and out of respect for those referred to, it is important to be aware of how to use names grammatically and in accordance with proper style and social norms. In today’s post, I will review some common errors in using names and how to correct them.

Last time, we talked about transitioning from topic to topic, which means from paragraph to paragraph. This time, let’s talk about the “micro-transitions” that occur inside the paragraph, sometimes from sentence to sentence and sometimes inside sentences.

Transitions are essential to making sense in a proposition or argument, so it’s little wonder that writers tend to get wordy with them. Transitions hold the entire proposal together, keeping your essay/report/letter/memo/dissertation from just sounding like a lot of unrelated ideas.

After freelance proofreading, editing, and writing and doing small-group literacy and math intervention for the past nine years, I find teaching ten-year-olds reading and writing this year a fascinating, eye-opening, and challenging experience. Reflecting on lessons I’ve learned teaching kids to write this fall, I realized that what my students struggle with is what writers of all ages struggle with, just at a different level.

With school having started already some places and about to start in others, many parents and caregivers are faced with the challenge of needing to be more actively involved in their children’s education than ever.

Implicit racism is woven into the fabric of American society. It plays a part in everything, including writing. Writers may try to be inclusive and unbiased, but it can be hard to weed out bias without taking time to deeply examine language’s and culture’s meanings, bias, and oneself.

If you find yourself in the unlucky position of writing a manual or set of instructions for how to assemble something from a bunch of other things, the following should help you understand and overcome your challenges in telling people what to do step by step.

No matter your motivation for blogging, you’ll want to make sure each post is high quality to keep your readers coming back. In today’s post, I’ll describe tips to make your blog more effective.

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.

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.

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.

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.