In celebration of International Plain Language Day, I reflect on the power of language to transform the world and grant and remove power from people on both ends of verbal and written interactions. More specifically, I consider the stress and anxiety that language can cause or spare its user, depending on how understandable it is to the audience.
At some point, asking for feedback on your writing is inevitable, and more so, indispensable. Bringing in an outside perspective can enrich the text and generate ideas for improvement. In this post, I address how to avoid the unhelpful and instead ask (and receive) constructive feedback on your writing.
In this post, I consider what translation editing is and where it sits among other processes that the text undergoes, with some examples from my experience working with Chinese authors who publish in English.
Taking a step back and looking critically at one’s work is always challenging, so in this post I discuss how to reducing word count with a proviso. My intention is that nonfiction, academic, business and popular science authors, writers and bloggers will find the following tips helpful when exceeding the word limit without reducing the content or sacrificing the correctness, clarity and cohesion.
There are lessons that writers can learn from the digital community to promote their books online, reach and interact with the readers and, above all, improve their prose. Read this post to learn how to use content writers’ readability strategies and make your text clearer.
In this post, I share my candid perspective. I touch upon six reasons why I love reading as a book-lover and editor who often works with nonfiction publications
Here’s a cheat sheet of the main elements of the self-publishing workflow that writers should consider ahead of time. Below I discuss each key process that comprises the self-publishing cycle, along with some practical information and pointers to helpful resources.
Spellcheckers are great tools for easy and quick fixes. But you should not depend on them as the only method of correcting your text. Since they do not consider content, style, target audience and many other elements that influence language, they have a minimal scope. Let me show you some most common examples of mistakes (but there are many more!) that will slip through the spellcheckers’ cracks.
There are several ways to improve your text before it undergoes editorial intervention. In this blog post, I walk you through a few simple tweaks that do not require you to have particularly savvy computer skills or knowledge of the editorial practice.
In this post, I take a close look at the importance and function of a style sheet in non-fiction writing. At the bottom, you’ll find free, downloadable templates (one with example content and a blank one) for your next writing project. An academic article, professional book, lifestyle blog or marketing content will benefit from the help that the style sheet offers.
I'm a freelance editor and indexer with a PhD in literary history. I work with non-fiction, academic and business texts.
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