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 […]