Style Matters #12: There’s a vowel in there … just not that one!
What is it with newsreaders pronouncing words such as Olympics or illegal as if they started with the letter “a”? The last time I checked, the great contest that rolls […]
Style Matters #11: Self-evacuation paints a queasy picture
Having quite an interest in breaking and traumatic news reporting, I’m rather fascinated by a term that’s coming into common usage when describing people fleeing an area under threat from […]
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 […]
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 […]
Tips for improving your written English
Writing fluent English can be a real a challenge for non-native and native speakers alike. Students at high school and university often find their work will be marked down because […]
Improving formal (academic) writing one handy tip at a time
While they may be comfortable with other genres, students, researchers and report-writers often struggle with the requirements with formal (academic) writing. Drawing on decades of formal writing experience, and marking […]
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 […]
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