sensitive editing + finishing touches = clear expression

Image credit: Gemini Over 20 years ago, I was a trainee editor in a small Kochi-based company that edited books sourced from a major US publisher. During the training period, we trainees were given books to edit, and our work was reviewed by the editorial chief, a writer–journalist–editor from Florida. I was a voracious reader and thought I could coast along using what I already knew, but I was in for a rude surprise. The books were written in American English (AmE). In India

Image credit: Gemini Once we have mastered the technical aspects of copyediting through reading, training, and experience, we will begin to notice that certain non-technical elements are equally important. Sometimes, it is our missteps that make us aware of these important elements, which can make or break our relationship with the author. In this piece, I'll explore some of these elements. Using Comments Tactically and Tactfully Often, the only communication we have with our

Excerpt from "A School Arithmetic" by Hall and Stevens What's the Difference? I 'd always thought width and breadth were synonyms, but...

Photo taken at a performance by the Great Royal Circus in Kochi, India, on September 4, 2010. The acrobat is holding on to the bar with his teeth! Recently, I was asked by a client to edit (mark up or annotate; although these terms are often used interchangeably, there is a distinction which will be made clear a little later) a PDF document, and it looked as though many more such jobs would be assigned to me in the future. In the distant past, I had edited PDFs regularly, bec

Generated by Canva AI I n this post, we'll see examples of how to handle "not only ... but also" constructions correctly by using a...

The problem of excessively long URLs is as old as the Internet, and I remember one popular solution that I used in the early 2000s: ...