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 […]
Tag Archives: grammar
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Brushing up your writing skills
Want to polish your writing style? Need to improve your grammar? Want to understand more about English writing rules? Then check out Towards a working grammar for journalists, a handy booklet co-written […]
Style matters #4: When ‘wake’ is a fright
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 […]
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