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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Increasingly we are reading/hearing the phrase “in the wake of …” If one is referring to the disturbed water behind a boat, then that’s fine. For everything else, why not […]
We’d always been taught that decreasing numbers of things that could be counted – such as objects or people – were fewer in number, while falling volumes – such as […]
While working as a sub-editor, an erudite colleague once pointed out to me that while we say – and more often write – the word swathe (which rhymes with lathe) as […]
How many times have you seen a sentence that contained a phrase such as “We were attacked by a myriad of insects and …” OR “They loved him in a myriad of […]