Don’t Let A Typo Ruin Your Reputation
Although they come off as tiny, insignificant, miniscule mistakes, typos are far from that. It can happen to the best of us. As we’re typing away at lightning speed, we forget to add the apostrophe in...
Tips To Stay Focused While Editing
Staying focused on a single task without getting distracted can be challenging—especially when you don’t have someone standing over your shoulder. Left to our own devices, this can prove to be quite...
The Importance of Reading for Writers
Just like visiting art galleries helps artists hone their craft, the same goes for reading for writers. Of all languages ever spoken, English contains the most words (over 250,000). That leaves us with...
Incorrectness: When It’s OK To Be Intentionally Wrong
Sometimes it’s OK to use words that aren’t real words or be grammatically wrong on purpose. Whether for stylistic reasons of for comedic effect, there are times when you can get away with being deliberately...
Conjunction, What’s Your Function?
Conjunctions are a quintessential part of our everyday language. Being one of the nine parts of speech (along with nouns, verbs, articles and such) their job is to connect. Unfortunately, conjunctions...
Beware the Buzzword
We’re all guilty of throwing a buzzword in here and there. And with their prevalence in everyday language nowadays, it’s hard not to use them. So what are they? Buzzwords are industry terms that sound...
Wave vs. Waive and Waver vs. Waiver
You’ve got to love those crafty homophones. For this month’s vs. post, we thought we would offer up a two-for-one. Wave, waive, waver and waiver all sound similar, and it’ll help to keep you on your...
Tips for Dealing with Tight Writing Deadlines
The dreaded deadline: it’s a writer’s worst enemy. And the best plug to stop the flow of creative juices. Whether you write professionally or as a student, you’re faced with deadlines; and the anxiety,...
5 of the Most Common Grammar Mistakes
The world of grammar encompasses a wide range of language rules and an even wider range of ways to mess those rules up. If you’ve ever written anything longer than a few sentences, you’ve probably...
5 Examples of How the English Language Makes No Sense At All
When you sit back and really take a look at the English language — at least our North American version of it — it almost seems unbelievable how we ever learn to communicate. With words that sound the...
Self-Editing Tip: Little Words that Don’t Need to be There
If you’ve been paying attention, you know that using long, complicated words is not the path to clear communication. But even if you’ve learned that lesson and practice it daily, you can still take...
To vs. Too vs. Two — the Saga Continues
This month’s “vs.” selection deals with three words that are often confused, even though one of them refers to a number. If you listen to someone speak, you’ll notice that some version of this...