Style matters #10: Who are you speaking to, not with
Despite what you might read in certain online forums, you should almost always speak to (or talk to) someone and not speak with (or talk with) them. Broadcasters seem to […]
Category Archives: Journalism
LNP fails test on Queensland threat from Rudd’s PNG ‘solution’
Manus Island Regional Processing Centre. (Source: Flickr/DIAC Images) ———— As soon as Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced his own version of a “stop the boats” plan, a number of […]
Style Matters #9: Wrangling numbers ain’t that hard
It is surprising how many writers struggle to master the rules for expressing dates, date ranges, numbers, times, ages, etc. So let’s review the basics, starting with dates. The style […]
Tips to help journalists tame technology: #2 Make Facebook your friend
Social media uptake still spins our heads and stuns our well-honed news sensibilities. After more than three decades working in and with the news business I still find it rather […]
Style Matters #8: Deci- … mate, are we razing our ability to calculate?
Yesterday I was reading about the awful fires in Arizona that claimed the lives of 19 brave firefighters when this sentence caught my eye: Officials said they expected about half […]
Tips to help journalists tame technology: #1 Quit trashing Twitter
OCTOBER 2015 UPDATES: #1 The smart social media editor Sarah Marshall from The Wall Street Journal has recently posted some useful quick tips about how to use Twitter effectively as […]
Covering tragic anniversary a delicate balancing act
This opinion piece was first written in April, 2006 The fact Australia’s media, like its citizens, wish to remember the loss of life at Port Arthur 10 years ago is […]
Style matters #7: Your ‘career’ is not complete without ‘careen’
There is a subtle difference between the verb form of career and its lesser-known – and I would argue increasingly under-used – cousin careen. The word “career” (used in its […]
Style matters #6: I’m not ‘biased’, so where’s ‘ed’?
I suppose I shouldn’t be but I’m always surprised when editing the copy of trained journalists – or, for that matter, grading highly educated university students about to begin their […]
Style matters #5: When to reject ‘refute’
The verb “refute” is often misused by writers. It means to disprove with evidence. Often writers will use it when they really should have used “reject” (to refuse to accept, […]
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