Hamilton & Hamilton Academic Editing

23/01/2023

Chinese New Year 2023 Newsletter -

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to getting your thesis published is getting the book proposal right. Read any guidelines and be concise. Resist the temptation to simply paste in the academic abstract from your work. Try to highlight the scholarly rigour of your work and explain why you think it might i...

10/01/2023

New Year 2023 Newsletter -

Not many theses or book length manuscripts are published as they were submitted. They are often too academic and lack the generality needed to appeal to a wider audience. There may also be issues related to copyright that require explicit permissions not needed for strictly academic work. You should...

19/04/2022

The English writer David Mitchell’s latest novel, "Utopia Avenue," is about a (fictional) late-’60s British rock band who, at various points, encounter (real-life) rock and roll figures. One scene takes place on the roof of the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where Janis Joplin give

12/04/2022

Contractions can make writing more natural sounding and readable – even formal texts. But what about contractions like 'I'd've', and (dare we even mention it) the mishearing of 'could've' as 'could of'? The OUP blog discusses using contractions with care. https://blog.oup.com/2022/04/contraction-distraction/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=oupblog

05/03/2022

For professional wordsmiths and those simply hoping to make their daily correspondence more polished. Also, if you’re the former, I’d love to pick your brain about career stuff.

01/02/2022

The Queen of Dictionary Corner has spoken.

16/11/2021

These days, the standard plural of person is people. Native English speakers might not even realize, in the larger scheme of things, how odd this is. Person and people don’t even have a common etymology! Person stems from the Latin persona, which originally referred to an actor’s mask, then to a...

20/10/2021

A bit more is known about the origin of the words thaw and dew than about ice and snow. They are less impenetrable than those two, but they also contain riddles.

14/08/2021

More good stuff from Grammar Girl.

In our last episode, we talked about the difference between prepositions and particles in order to discuss the famous grammar punch line, “This is the kind of pedantic nonsense up with which I will not put!” Today we’re going to get into two other interesting properties of particle

04/08/2021

Recently, a question that went something like this appeared in a Facebook group for writers seeking help from book editors: Help with this sentence please! “Some advice, for whoever/whomever is interested.”

29/06/2021

End of Academic Year 2021 Newsletter - https://mailchi.mp/25749ecf1df0/2020-winter-newsletter-13415799

28/05/2021

This month we’re doing something a little different. Instead of focusing exclusively on CMOS, this quiz highlights some of the differences between US style and UK style (commonly called British style). But we won’t be quizzing you on trunk versus boot or fries versus chips.