sensitive editing + finishing touches = clear expression

Twelve years ago, I emailed a friend, congratulating him on his impending marriage. A few days later, we spoke, and he questioned my use...

It seemed simple enough. The style called for figure captions to be placed above figures (in fact, they were even called figure titles),...

The title piece of this fine collection is by Hilary Mantel, and it begins thus: "Three or four nights after surgery — when, in the words...

This is a terribly worded public health message that seems to be spreading like a virus: it is now appended to routine SMSs from public...

Double punctuation is ugly, but unavoidable sometimes. For example, it appears in dialogue: He said, "I try to avoid double punctuation."...

I edit PDF documents using Acrobat Reader DC, a free tool. It generally works flawlessly, but which complex piece of software is bug...

The deadline was near, and I had to copy a table the author had sent into the main document. A routine task—except that the table would...

The books I edit arrive as separate Word files, one for each chapter. I cannot recall ever receiving a book as a single file. For one...

In a previous post (on researcher name coincidences), I mentioned Indian and British English: A Handbook of Usage and Pronunciation by Nihalani, Tongue, and Hosali. I have a used copy of the first edition, published in 1979 by Oxford University Press. I don't remember when I bought it; it had been lying forgotten in a bookcase for years. I found it when I was looking for another book. Browsing through it, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the entries. The authors h