My editing advice column, Ask Dr. Editor, is available through UniversityAffairs.ca. This Ask Dr. Editor piece shares Writing well is hard, a free tool that delivers statistics on your writing and your favourite academic author’s, and helps you to emulate writing styles that you admire: “Writing well is hard: How to write like the best writers in yourContinue reading “#AskDrEditor: Writing well is hard: How to write like the best writers in your discipline”
Tag Archives: readability
#AskDrEditor: Reducing the weight of your words
My editing advice column, Ask Dr. Editor, is now available through UniversityAffairs.ca. This Ask Dr. Editor explains why you don’t want more than six words in between the main subject and verb of your sentence, and how to integrated plain language writing strategies into your work: “Reducing the weight of your words: How to lightenContinue reading “#AskDrEditor: Reducing the weight of your words”
#AskDrEditor: Your Reader is a Little Bit Drunk
My editing advice column, Ask Dr. Editor, is now available through UniversityAffairs.ca. The second Ask Dr. Editor question comes from a faculty member who isn’t sure how to advise her trainees as they write their job application materials. Have a question you want me to answer? Contact me!
25 words
Your sentences are too long. Shorten your sentences! As an editor, I’m more descriptive instead of prescriptive. I know that audience, context and genre shape meaning. Language is a shifting beast–but more problematically than that, the so-called ‘rules’ of grammar and writing are arbitrary, classist, colonialist, even wrong. But I’m still going to tell youContinue reading “25 words”