Category «Punctuation»

From the Heart of a Copy Editor, by Sheila Glasbey

When I was writing and self-publishing my ‘mistakes’ e-books, I was particularly conscious of the fact that I could be making many bloopers myself. Like most writers, I have blind spots. I also have my own linguistic tics and quirks, no doubt many of which some might reasonably consider ‘wrong’. I was a writer, writing about …

Em dash, en dash, hyphen — which to use?

Em dashes, en dashes, hyphens. Three horizontal bars of punctuation, of different lengths, but which to choose for which job? If you’re anything like me, you might typically use guesswork (on a good day) or impatiently plump for the hyphen (on a bad day), but this is hardly ideal, is often incorrect, and just makes work …

Twin brackets, commas and dashes (Mistake #66)

Good day. Here’s a little lesson which I hope you’ll find useful. Consider three sentences: The poet Angela Smith (who had travelled from the Shetlands) said the book festival was a huge success. The poet Angela Smith, who had travelled from the Shetlands, said the book festival was a huge success. The poet Angela Smith …

Writing-related Googling (Part I) (Mistake #63)

Because if you indulge in it, and one of the results takes you to the writing blog of a tutor who favours reading his Google Analytics stats ahead of addressing his looming deadlines, you run the risk of your search term being appropriated, occasionally for lightly comic purposes, and presented to readers in Writing-related Googling …

Only talented writers sell (Mistake #50)

There are a lot of perfectly competent but otherwise fairly unremarkable writers earning a decent living from words. There are a few poor writers getting by as well. If you’re scratching your head, unconvinced, thinking that you rarely see average or poor writing in print, I have to declare a possible unfair advantage over you …

The Digest has more than one Reader (Mistake #46)

Obviously, as a tutor, part of my job is to correct spelling – and that’s okay. At first, I may point out that a student needs to work on his or her spelling, and if things don’t improve, I may issue a little reminder. There’s really not that much to say about it, I don’t …

Do you want hyphens with that, sir? (Mistake #44)

Meet Rustic farmer Ben, presently ubiquitous on London’s transport system, and probably far beyond. He’s not rustic farmer Ben, which would be fine, or Rustic Farmer Ben, which would also be fine, if a little self-aggrandising, but Rustic farmer Ben, which is plain wrong and already predisposes me to want to slap him across the …

The Apostrophe (Mistake #26)

Few will think badly of you if you don’t know, say, whether it’s St James’s Park or St James’ Park, but if you write something like “its important to get word’s right” you’re inviting derision. Apostrophe howlers like this will make any decent editor wince. Granted, perhaps she’ll think “Oh, it’s all right – we’ve …

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 …