Tag: proofreading

The mysteries of pronunciation are solved! Not sure how to pronounce boson, dais, belfry, duchy, or denigrated? Check out the talking dictionary at howjsay.com. Sooo cool.

Surprise!  It’s both.

Login is the noun.  Log in is the verb.

So, you log in to your website using your login.  Got it?

Have some more helpful writing tips?  We always love to hear them.

Thanks to Alise Isbell for contributing this wonderful post on a very interesting proofreading method. You’re bound to catch more errors if you do this!

Ratiocination is a miracle that changed the way I write and edit. While not a professional writer, my company trains people how to write more effectively, and ratiocination helps. Webster’s Dictionary defines ratiocination as “the process of exact thinking” or “a reasoned train of thought.”

Language is a vehicle, like a car. It has parts like suffixes, prefixes, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs etc… People can rearrange the parts to function differently. For example, we slow down the reader with longer words or more complicated verb tenses. We can also speed up the reader by doing the opposite. The key to effective writing is tinkering with the right parts of language to get the desired results.

Why does ratiocination get results? When proofreading, the process isolates grammar concepts and allows the writer to assess the parts instead of the whole piece. Writers use basic grammar concepts with this process to improve the effectiveness and impact of their message.

How it works:
Continue reading “Simple Proofreading Process with a Big Name: Ratiocination”

Make any resolutions this year? I’m going to propose you make one more: Polish your emails. Write flawless notes. Look smarter.

Check out this hilarious cartoon on The Oatmeal’s site, Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling. It outlines some of the most commonly misspelled words (and yes, even the best of us make these mistakes sometimes) in a fun, entertaining way. Study it. Commit these words to memory.

If I could add just one more word pair to this list, it would Continue reading “Ten Words to Learn How to Spell in 2010”

I find that most writers approach proofreading as a dreaded afterthought. Once they finish the actual writing, the idea of poring over their copy one last time to discover tiny errors seems…loathsome.

Trust me, proofreading is infinitely important. Nothing looks sloppier than using “your” when you should have used “you’re.” Or misspelling the name of the company you’re writing about. Little errors can drown out your message, but clean error-free copy strengthens it. Check out these simple ways to pack more punch into your proofreading:

Print out your work. Reading on the computer screen strains your eyes. You’ll be surprised how many extra errors you’ll catch by printing out your copy and reading it out loud.

Vary your sentence structure. Copy that consists of simple subject verb object structures over and over is boring. Pay attention to your sentences so that one sentence starts with a prepositional phrase and the next one begins with a gerund.

Alter the lengths of your sentences. Too many long sentences make your copy cumbersome; too many short ones make it feel choppy. For interesting and vibrant copy, some sentences should be long and some should be short. Like this one.

Check for consistency. Make sure that if you hyphenate a word once, that you hyphenate it throughout your work. Also, take a look at your bullets. They should all start with the same type of word: subject, gerund, action verb, etc.

Whether you look forward to proofing your work or loath the thought of doing it, remember that it has to be done. Put in a little extra time and your copy will be cleaner. For added security against typos, have someone – anyone – take a look at your work for you. A new set of eyes will find many of the tiny mistakes you’ve been too close to see.

When you work with words every day, it’s not always easy to keep your vocabulary fresh. I’m a word junkie. I’d like to think that I’m a formidable Scrabble opponent. I even have one of those dorky word-a-day calendars on my desk. But, like any other writer, I occasionally slip into a word choice wasteland where mediocrity rules and the most compelling adjectives I can come up with are absolutely mind-numbing: perfect; beautiful.

Yawn.

Good writing is about more than just stringing together a sentence or selling a widget. Good writing should grab the reader’s attention and make them want more, whether you’re writing ad copy, a financial newsletter, or even a blog entry. Precise, interesting words make or break your prose.

Invest in a good thesaurus. Use it. End of story.

After all, why settle for perfect when you can be unblemished, flawless, or unsurpassed?

Who wants to be merely beautiful? Personally, I’d rather be alluring or fetching.

Sometimes when trying to achieve a fun, casual tone in writing, especially important in many marketing and sales projects, it’s usually best to write the same way we talk, right?

Wrong. Our speech is riddled with poor grammar and misused words because we don’t have the advantage of editing our words as we speak (but wouldn’t that make the world a much better place?). We become accustomed to hearing words and phrases improperly used and incorporate them into our writing – but, even though these words, phrases, and poor grammatical structures are acceptable in speech, they are dead giveaways of poor copywriting.

So when writing an article, the word “restauranteur” kept showing up in red on my spell-check program. I didn’t understand the problem until my editor corrected me – the proper word is “restaurateur.” If I had been speaking, I could have faked it. But when mistakes are written on the page in black and white, they appear larger than life.

A good example of a phrase that is commonly misused in speech and then transferred into writing is “for all intensive purposes.” What exactly is an “intensive purpose?” That phrase makes no sense at all – the correct phrase is “for all intents and purposes.”

And then there’s my number one pet-peeve of all time, and a telltale sign of poor, uninformed writing: should of, would of, and could of.

When speaking, we often use the contractions “should’ve, would’ve, could’ve,” which sounds like we are saying “should of, would of, could of.” In fact, because they are contractions, the correct usage is should have, would have, and could have.

With a thorough background in grammar and some careful editing, these mistakes can be avoided. Spelling, grammar, and correct usage are the essential building blocks of polished writing. Be sure to watch out for those homonyms, most spell-check programs won’t pick them up. If you don’t know the difference between affect and effect, or when to use to, two, and too, try an internet search and brush up on commonly misused words.

And no, “irregardless” is certainly not a word, no matter how often you hear it in usage. “Regardless” is a better term – and correct … look it up!