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journey towards the sun

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An Editor in a Three-Day Writer’s Boot Camp, Part 3

Tuesday September 16, 2014

Later that afternoon, I arrived home and plunked myself down in front of a blank screen. It felt like I’d joined the ranks of such writers as Hemingway and Faulkner, Ludlum and Michener, and many others who’d lost manuscripts and had to start over from scratch. Of course, in this day and age, you don’t […]

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authors critique editing feedback manuscript review workshops writing

Golden trophy

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Wasted Words: A Compulsion to Exaggerate

Tuesday February 24, 2015

Frank McKenna, a San Diego photographer, complains that all photos displayed on the web are described as stunning. “What’s going on here?” he asks. “When did every picture become stunning?” McKenna sees this as word inflation. I agree to a point. Certainly it’s almost insulting nowadays to simply say something is delightful or charming; we […]

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adjectives language superlatives usage Wasted Words word choice writing

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The Editor’s Companion

The Editor’s Companion

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Speech bubbles

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In My Opinion

Tuesday March 17, 2015

There are a heck of a lot of opinions out there. Some days they come at you as thick as blackflies over Lac Ouareau on a July afternoon. Small, insistent opinions: some winging singly and some blackening the sky in noisy hordes. Some are meaningful and some mean well and some are just mean, but […]

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judgment opinions writers writing

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Victoria Neufeldt

We’re All Looking for Style

Tuesday July 14, 2015

What is style in writing? Writers — and their editors, of course — must think about this, but not everyone agrees on what is appropriate. A writer of non-fiction, for example, probably aims for an unobtrusive style in which the language — the words and phrases, the syntax and grammar — takes second place to the content. […]

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informal language register style tone usage voice

Change

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Who Let That Word Into the Dictionary? | Linguistics, Frankly

Tuesday August 18, 2015

Every so often, Oxford or Merriam-Webster will release a list of words recently added to one of their dictionaries, and many people become grouchy at what they see as awful — or even fake — intrusions that have somehow been bootlegged into the hallowed halls of the official lexicon. You may even agree that they […]

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language change Linguistics Frankly new words slang

Correct English: Reality or Myth

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Review: Correct English: Reality or Myth? by Geoffrey Marnell

Tuesday September 22, 2015

I’m sure all of us, as editors, have encountered heated discussions about the notion of “correct” English. It’s an inescapable occupational hazard. With the prescriptivists in one corner and the descriptivists in the other, the debate continually rages on. I was curious to know if Geoffrey Marnell would bring anything new to the discussion with […]

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descriptivism Geoffrey Marnell language myths prescriptivism review Sue Archer

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Wasted Words: Quarrelling With Pronouns

Tuesday April 12, 2016

Around the time the Great Flood started to recede I was taught to write, “Everyone must remove his shoes.” Funny how boys aren’t bothered by such preferential usage of male gender pronouns. Back then feminism was a feature of the French Revolution and the current usage of politically correct had yet to surface. Mostly the […]

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gender equality gender-neutral pronouns language change pronouns Wasted Words Wilf Popoff

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Rosemary Shipton

Those Unpublishable Manuscripts

Tuesday October 11, 2016

We’ve all had them – those manuscripts that arrive on our desks that should not be published. They have little merit in either content or expression, and our initial impulse is to return them immediately. How do we deal with them? If the project comes from a trade publisher, the contract with the author was probably […]

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author-editor relationship editor's role editors at work publishing Rosemary Shipton self-publishing

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Where the Ink Meets the Road — Insights From Working In a Bookstore

Tuesday November 15, 2016

I’ve recently picked up a few shifts a week at a bookstore, receiving and stocking while I think about where I want to go with my career. As a longtime editor, it’s giving me a different view of the book world. The logistics alone are impressive. Early every morning we arrive to new skids of […]

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books bookstore customer relations distribution marketing Paul Cipywnyk product placement