I’ve recently noticed our esteemed and usually linguistically precise news personnel on our national broadcaster have been referring to people who come from Afghanistan as Afghanis. However, the word Afghani […]

There many words in everyday language that are redundant – or, at best, misused – in newswriting or, for that matter, in other writing genres. In an earlier post, we […]

I often decry the misuse and slow disappearance of the comma (,) because it is probably the most handy punctuation device in a writer’s artillery. This tiny mark plays a […]

Everybody deserves to have their name spelled or spoken correctly. To see or hear your name, even your nickname, misspelled in writing, or mispronounced on air, is a personal affront […]

While we are less economical with language in conversation than when we write, tight writing is an artform well mastered by those who write successfully for a living. And, with […]

Experienced writers sometimes use two compositional techniques, inversion and transposition, to bring clarity, emphasis or even variety to their prose. Yet too much of either is both irritating for readers […]

One of the habits all writers need to be conscious of is the tendency to slip into passive voice which erodes the action, immediacy and urgency of their prose. It […]

One of the guidelines for good writing is to ensure tenses are consistent throughout a sentence and, usually, throughout a paragraph or section of a story as well. In rare […]

There are a couple of words that writers and broadcasters are inclined to embellish unnecessarily. The first of these is one used when reporting serious violence, grievous, as in ‘grievous […]

Use of the indefinite article (a or an) has been known to trip up even experienced writers. Which option to use in front of a particular word, especially a word […]