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By Seth Nichols I want to let you in on a secret: any piece of writing that you edit has been written by someone. Okay, perhaps that isn’t much of a secret, but it’s a piece of information that’s easily forgotten when in the throes of editing. Once you begin checking those Oxford commas and…

By Erin Brenner Professional groups are great resources for networking, problem-solving, and more. I love the Editors Association of Earth and the related subgroups. The ability to ask literally thousands of editors how they would fix a sentence or respond to an author is mind-blowing, frankly, if you think how isolated we were just a couple of…

By Paul Chevannes I often think of scotch bonnet peppers and allspice (pimento berries) as the be-all and end-all of Jamaican cooking—two must-haves! Similarly, the exclamation point and colon are must-haves when punctuating a piece of prose. The exclamation point and colon are two of the most positive punctuation marks around. They represent affirmation and equality,…

By Craig Clarke Good editing is invisible. Bad editing is painfully obvious—usually because the editor has, instead of clarifying the author’s intent, attempted to rewrite in the editor’s own style. Editors are there to remove, rearrange, and altogether improve, not to make the writing their own. To illustrate this idea, I will take a piece of…

By Andy Hollandbeck Like no other holiday, Thanksgiving revolves around food. For many of us, the day sets visions of roasted turkey and dressing, mounds of mashed potatoes, cranberry jelly, and pumpkin pie dancing in our heads. But many Americans are being more health-conscious these days, creating more balanced and nutritious meals for their family…

By Alex Cruden Endnote 104 was the final one in a 46-page business case study package I was editing. The case was about a global retail company’s response to a major U.S. incident in August 2019 involving a highly controversial sociopolitical issue. The response was successful, the case study concluded. Factual proof was that the…

By Andy Hollandbeck Whether can be a problem word for many writers and editors. Should it be followed by or not? Should it be replaced with if? Whether you need them or not, here are some guidelines to help you gauge your whether. ADDING ‘OR NOT,’ OR NOT Adding or not after whether is usually unnecessary; whether implies a choice, and therefore also implies the or…

By Lisa McLendon One of the topics in my #ACES2020Online session, “Grammar Arcana,” was ablaut reduplication. I had a hunch this would be a talked-about topic for two reasons: first, it has a fun name, and second, everyone knows what it is, even if they don’t know what it’s called. Ablaut reduplication is the pattern…

By Crystal Shelley, LCSW During my social work practicum in hospice care, someone mentioned that a patient had passed away. My supervisor later told me how much he disliked that term. His explanation has stayed with me a decade later. “What does ‘passed away’ even mean? It’s sugarcoating a reality that happens to all of us. A person…