Category «Mistakes»

Unfinished business (Mistake #14)

“Make sure you complete things,” says motoring journalist and author Maria McCarthy, who also runs writing workshops and classes. “Don’t have lots of ‘beginnings’ stuffed in drawers.” The second I came across this tip I realised it was a winner. Maria was referring to fiction, as it happens, but it could easily be applied to …

Loose brackets (Mistake #13)

So: round brackets, properly known as parentheses. What are they used for? * to offer the reader an aside (which is a thoughtful thing to do); * to give an unimportant piece of information (in which only a few readers may be interested); * to offer extra information (such as a fuller explanation of a …

“I can’t write for Yachting Monthly!” (Mistake #12)

Or Dog’s World. Or Hair Today. Or any other number of specialist titles which make up the bulk of publications you find at major newsagents, in the areas of cars, computing, horses, classical music, crafts, genealogy, religion, gardening and the rest. Wrong. You can. I often encourage students and new writers to consider these specialist …

Of untils, tills, ‘tills, tils and ‘tils (Mistake #11)

I suppose it had to happen. Not that I considered myself immune – far from it. But mine’s a daft mistake – and it’s one that I’ve been making for some years. Worse: I’ve been inflicting it pretty much exclusively on my poor students. As if they’ve not suffered enough. The word “till” is an …

Mentioning your research (Mistake #10)

This will be obvious and second nature to many of you, but I see it often enough to justify an entry. Let’s take this extract from a fictitious article intended for a health magazine: When I spoke to dietitian Victoria Plum on the telephone, and asked her what she thought of the study into the …

“I can do better than that!” (Mistake #9)

You’re reading – a book, an article. And you hate it. “I can do better than that!” you sneer, tossing it aside. That’s not the mistake. The mistake is not letting your response go. Let me explain… Rubbish occasionally gets published. Does that surprise you? It shouldn’t. Bad songs get recorded and sung, bad art …

Putting your reader second… (behind your interviewee) (Mistake #8)

“The most important thing was to write a piece that my interviewee would be completely happy with,” was what a writer told a colleague of mine a while ago, regarding a sculptor she was profiling for an arts journal. I’m sure the final piece was excellent, but I couldn’t help feeling this attitude was a …

Accepting “we have no budget” (Mistake #7)

I often advise new students to start modestly with local papers, local magazines and other niche or humble titles. It helps build up confidence, gets you into the habit of writing regularly, boosts your research skills… and so on. You’ll also probably get useful feedback from editors with whom you’re working. Often, small publications may …

Not looking up familiar words (Mistake #6)

It’s easy to assume a word with which you’ve been familiar for years means exactly what you’ve always taken it to mean. Maybe you first came across the word in a slightly ambiguous context. Maybe nobody has ever corrected you when you’ve used it. Maybe they didn’t know either. Maybe you’ve just not given it …

Designing Your Articles (Mistake #5)

You’re a writer not a designer. You work with words not a palette of colours. Your business is text not image. What follows has been partly inspired by Julie Phillips, author of the Article Antics blog, and Diane Perry of the Working 2 Write blog. Julie recently posted here that her writing tutor had asked …