Use calendar invitations to keep your experts on schedule
Do you ever struggle to get your authors and subject-matter experts to return their edits and comments on time? I’ve learned a new way to nudge them. This year a new person took over coordinating an editing project that I’d worked on before. I was surprised that the project ran more or less on schedule, […]
Can you use numerals at the start of a sentence?
One of the first writing rules I learned was that I can’t use numerals to start a sentence. But in recent years, my certainty about that rule has been shaken. Headlines can start with numerals First, I learned that it’s OK to start an article headline with a numeral, at least in Associated Press (AP) […]
MISTAKE MONDAY for November 29: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? This is an example from my blog. Yes, I make careless mistakes, too, including a mistake that I later fixed. As you see in this item, I initially spelled Emmy Favilla’s last name with one l instead of two. I post Mistake Monday items partly to […]
My 2021 reading with suggestions for you
This year I devoted much of my serious reading time to learning more about race through nonfiction and fiction. I also grappled with some issues of race on my blog in “How to edit articles about Black people” and “Working with a sensitivity reader.” Race—nonfiction Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji—I […]
Data are versus data is
Should you write “data is” or “data are”? Whenever possible, I suggest writing to avoid the use of the term “data” by itself. Why? Because, as Garner’s Modern American Usage says, “Data is a SKUNKED term: whether you write data are or data is, you’re likely to make some readers raise their eyebrows.” I think […]