Oct 13, 2022MICROSOFT WORDThe Case of the Line That Would Not GoA misplaced horizontal line in an MS Word document I was editing had to go. The problem was that it stubbornly dug its heels in and...
Sep 22, 2022BOOKS The Academic Uses of ImprisonmentAn inescapable part of editing academic material is Internet research, which can unexpectedly entertain and inform (see The Serendipitous...
Aug 31, 2022PHOTOGRAPHY Street Reader 3: Reading in the RainA lottery ticket seller takes a break. He's well equipped for the rainy day. And yes, reading and rainy days are made for each other....
May 24, 2022BOOKSTables That Eat Grass and Crows That Fly Upside DownIn the book To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism by Debashish Roy Chowdhury and John Keane, I came across this sentence...
Apr 20, 2022BOOKSDiseases Named after PatientsThis passionately written book (The Invention of Surgery by David Schneider) describes the giant strides medicine has made since its...
Mar 8, 2022LANGUAGE Copyediting Is Problem SolvingThe sentence (suitably disguised for confidentiality) stopped me in my tracks: "The absence of pregnancy and lactation may explain the...
Mar 6, 2022LANGUAGEThe Mainstreaming of the Word "Shit" in Personal Transformation ParlanceThe book I was editing was about personal transformation for corporate managers. The author was a well-known coach. The language was so...
Mar 5, 2022EDITINGCreative Titles in Scientific PapersIn my post Researcher Name Coincidence, I quoted from the book Academia Obscura by Glen Wright: As part of a long-running bet, five...
Mar 4, 2022LANGUAGEThe Difference between "Sum" and "Summation" in Mathematical WritingThe difference between summation and sum should be clear enough: summation is the process of adding, whereas a sum is the result of the...