Quick Editing Tip: Rewrite Extraneous, Awkwardly, Long Noun Phrases

Adjectives and adverbs are great, but as many writing books tell you, be sure to use them in moderation. Especially, look out for those strings of adjectives and adverbs in front of nouns. Adding all these chotskies can also turn the phrase into what are known as misplaced modifiers that make a sentence’s meaning ambiguous. Even if the meaning is mostly clear, these long phrases are also just awkward to read.

A Gift For Yourself

Ask anyone who works from home if they like the isolation, and you’ll likely get an answer something like love and hate.  There’s a fine line between enjoying the solitude and holding too many conversations with the voices in my head (there’s John, Susan, Frank, and about five more in mine) 

What the Heck Is a .docx?

So, you just emailed someone the file you saved on your brand-new Microsoft Word 07 program, when you get a confused reply saying they can’t open it.  Or, you’re that bewildered recipient.  What happened?!  Isn’t a Word document a Word document?

Giving Writing Critiques in a Group

A few weeks ago in my writing group, one guy asked some questions to get everyone talking about why they want to write and what they wanted to get out of the group.  The following discussion was very interesting.

Everyday and Every Day

Here’s a tricky word combo I initially missed the other day while proofreading. One of those things I knew, but that I had never thought much about. It’s important however, “every day” and “everyday” have pretty distinct meanings. I did a quick Google search and from the number of hits I sure am not the only one who’s had trouble with this.