Em & En Word Craft

25/11/2019

Who shivers at the 'word echo'?

10/11/2019

Try to find someone this week in your workplace who would appreciate a mentor. It is wonderful to help another person.

25/09/2019

How to make your copy tight and tighter: 25 Tips for tightening your copy:

Before sharing your writing with the world, apply these editing tips. We show you exactly how to make edits to your own work.

01/05/2018

I mostly do digital inline editing these days. Sometimes I miss my red pen!

07/03/2018

A young gentleman rang me the other day for advice on how he could become an editor. I spent 30 minutes giving him some tips. Reminded me of my first foray into the publishing field 25 years ago.

01/03/2018

Something to smile about.

Grammar rules to live by.

Via Weird Tales Magazine

06/02/2018

Did You Know?

It doesn't take much to start people arguing about words, but there's no quarrel about the origin of logomachy. It comes from the Greek roots logos, meaning "word" or "speech," and machesthai, meaning "to fight," and it entered English in the mid-1500s. If you're a word enthusiast, you probably know that logos is the root of many English words (monologue, neologism, logic, and most words ending in -logy, for example), but what about other derivatives of machesthai? Actually, this is a tough one even for word whizzes. Only a few very rare English words come from machesthai. Here are two of them: heresimach ("an active opponent of heresy and heretics") and naumachia ("an ancient Roman spectacle representing a naval battle").

31/01/2018

DO BIG WORDS MAKE YOU SEEM SMARTER?
Having worked in the magazine sector as well as in books, the use of 'big' words where simpler words could – and should – be used has been a bugbear of mine. I recently came across this article, which makes some great points about choosing the simpler over the ostentatious.

Do you sound smarter when you use big words? According to a study published in Applied Cognitive Psychology , the answer is no. In fact, complex writing makes you sound small-minded. Just consider the title of the study: Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: problems...

09/01/2018

Did You Know? Mutatis mutandis – What the?!


Unlike most English terms with Latin parentage, mutatis mutandis (which translates literally as "things having been changed that have to be changed") maintains its Latinate aspect entirely. It doesn't look like an English phrase, which is perhaps why it remains rather uncommon despite having functioned in English since the 16th century. Although the phrase is used in the specialized fields of law, philosophy, and economics when analogous situations are discussed, it appears in other contexts, too, where analogy occurs, as this quote from Henry James' The American demonstrates: "Roderick made an admirable bust of her at the beginning of the winter, and a dozen women came rushing to him to be done, mutatis mutandis, in the same style."

15/12/2017

From Merriam-Webster: Did You Know?

Gravamen is not a word you hear every day, but it does show up occasionally in modern-day publications. It comes from the Latin verb gravare, meaning "to burden," and ultimately from the Latin adjective gravis, meaning "heavy." Fittingly, gravamen refers to the part of a grievance or complaint that gives it weight or substance. In legal contexts, gravamen is used, synonymously with gist, to refer to the grounds on which a legal action is sustainable. Gravis has given English several other weighty words, including gravity, grieve, and the adjective grave, meaning "important" or "serious."

08/12/2017

Language …