Brevity and Clarity
Friday, March 27th, 2009"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them." ~ John Ruskin
Archive for the ‘Polish Your Writing’ Category
"Say all you have to say in the fewest possible words, or your reader will be sure to skip them; and in the plainest possible words or he will certainly misunderstand them." ~ John Ruskin
Proofread carefully to see if you any words out
Thursday, March 19th, 2009Our eyes and minds play tricks on us when we read our own writing. We "see" what we think we wrote, what we meant to write . . . not always what's actually on the page or the screen. To catch errors such as missing words, try reading your work aloud. ...
Lesser-Known Editing and Proofreading Marks
Saturday, January 10th, 2009I've never used z-z-z-z to recommend a deletion, nor an infinity symbol to mark a passage as too long . . . but I have to confess, some of these hilarious editing and proofreading marks have occasionally been quite tempting! http://www.geist.com/comix
The hazards of assuming too much
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008As an editor, I'm always on the alert for passages where writers assume some knowledge that their readers may actually not have. When you're the expert on your topic, this is a particularly easy trap to fall into. Today while I was working out at the gym, this hazard was highlighted in ...
