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Wherefore Pleaseth Archaic English?

Tuesday January 5, 2016

“O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low.” Are these not beautiful […]

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Ruth E. Thaler-Carter

Facts and Fiction: Grammar Vampires and True Crime

Tuesday June 30, 2015

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed By Karen Elizabeth Gordon. Pantheon Books, 1984, 1993. Wild, wacky, inventive grammar guide continues to educate and amuse The opportunity to review the new edition (1993) of Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar […]

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book reviews Facts and Fiction grammar

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Dwain Richardson

English Editing in Quebec: Local Realities — Montreal and Area

Tuesday October 21, 2014

It’s a well-known fact: Quebec is the only French-language province in Canada. According to recent statistics, la belle province is home to over eight million inhabitants.[1] Of these inhabitants, 78 per cent are native French speakers and over seven per cent are English speakers. In the Greater Montreal Area, 47 per cent of residents identify […]

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bilingualism copy editing editing editorial work language révision translation

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James Harbeck

Seriously, What’s the Problem With Sentence Adverbs? | Linguistics, Frankly

Tuesday September 9, 2014

The English language is a very complex and powerful thing, capable of many nuances and quite resistant to simplistic attempts at tidying it up. Sadly, not everyone realizes that. Worse still, many people take very narrow and inconsistent views, focusing on pet peeves while letting parallel instances of usage pass unnoticed. It’s as though a […]

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grammar language linguistics Linguistics Frankly usage word choice writing

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Cy Strom

Because … It’s Time!

Tuesday August 19, 2014

“Whatever the current term for ‘hip’ is, that’s what we want to be …” This, I’m told, was the EAC Rebranding Task Force brief to the bilingual design team chosen to look into the organization’s midlife crisis, the youthful Costa Leclerc. “That’s a startling design — it will be fun to write about it.” This […]

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brand design editing editors rebranding

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James Harbeck

There’s No Way to Truly Split an Infinitive | Linguistics, Frankly

Tuesday June 17, 2014

You can’t split an infinitive. I don’t mean I don’t want you to. I don’t mean it’s not proper to. I mean it’s not possible to. This is for the same reason that I haven’t just broken one off three times, at the ends of the three preceding sentences. The English infinitive is one word. […]

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grammar language linguistics Linguistics Frankly usage word choice writing

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James Harbeck

Topics, We Front Them | Linguistics, Frankly

Tuesday January 14, 2014

English is normally a subject-verb-object kind of language, but there are some interesting exceptions, especially in casual contexts. Consider examples such as the following: Poodles, we walk them. Labradors, they walk us. Chickens we have; roads, not so much. Not one of the clauses above follows standard English sentence order, and yet we understand them. […]

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grammar language Linguistics Frankly syntax usage word choice

A business man sits at a desk, among other business men, talking into a mic with a sheet of paper in front of him.

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Wilf Popoff

WASTED WORDS: Stalking Verbosity

Tuesday July 30, 2013

Verbosity is the technical term for Wasted Words and it reflects the ongoing motif of this blog series. Verbosity noun the fact or quality of using more words than needed; wordiness. (Oxford Online Dictionary) Not much here to make a writer proud. I admit to being verbosity-obsessed: while writing I’m terrorized by the possibility I’ll […]

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editing grammar redundancies redundancy usage verbosity

Colour portrait of Dr. Edwin Battistella, dressed in a shirt and sports jacket with arms open, likely delivering a lecture.

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Karen Virag

GETTABLE GRAMMAR: Learning to like “like”

Tuesday April 9, 2013

One often hears complaints about how some people litter their sentences with the word like—not as a noun, verb, preposition or conjunction, but as, like, an interjection. Like that. Now I know that Canadians like to blame Americans for all the world’s ills, but we can’t really lay this verbal tic at the feet of […]

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editing editor Edwin Batistella Gettable Grammar grammar Grammar Gals R.W. Burchfield usage

Close-up shot of a woman's hand, holding a pen, resting on an open book, suggesting that she is studying.

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Kristina Lundberg

Rising Above the Plateau: Mid-Career PD for Editors

Tuesday January 22, 2013

Every fall I struggle with the professional development plan I’m required to submit to my employer. My first decade in editing was brimming with formal and informal professional development, and my professional growth was steep. Fourteen years into my career, how can I rise above the PD plateau and continue to grow? Of course, in editing there’s […]

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career development editing editor mentorship PD strategies