Hyphens matter
Hyphen, shmyphen, who cares whether you use hyphens? A Facebook ad drove home the lesson that hyphens’ role as connectors is important. “Imagine life pain free,” said the ad. This hyphenless sentence could be interpreted as “Imagine getting ‘life pain’ at no cost.” No, thanks, I’ll pass on that offer. The advertiser should have written, […]
FEB. NEWSLETTER: Format your numbers correctly
Formatting ordinal numbers It drives me crazy to see formatting like “10th” in people’s writing. I believe it happens because Microsoft wrongly makes superscript its default for ordinal numbers. But that’s wrong, at least according to Associated Press style, which shows the “th” suffix in regular font. I couldn’t find any well-known style guide that […]
MISTAKE MONDAY for Jan.27: Can YOU spot what’s wrong?
Can you spot what’s wrong in the image below? Please post your answer as a comment. I post these challenges to raise awareness of the importance of proofreading. Believe it or not, this mistake appeared on the AP Stylebook website. I imagined that website would have a rigorous proofreading process. The moral of the […]
Why there’s no apostrophe in writers room
I’ve long wondered why there is no apostrophe in words like “writers room,” ‘homeowners association,” or “teachers college.” Is the noun descriptive or possessive? I found a good explanation in Emmy J. Favilla’s A World Without “Whom.” Do not use an apostrophe when a word is primarily descriptive rather than possessive…. The word is acting […]
JAN. NEWSLETTER: Verbs make your writing vivid
I was struck by this advice in Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: You want vivid writing. How do we get vivid writing? Verbs, first. Precise verbs. All of the action on the page, everything that happens, happens in the verbs. According to Chee, writer Annie Dillard told her students to “increase the average […]