Here’s something that bugs me: sentences constructed as “this needs to happen.” For example, on a news report about the lack of mental health care workers in Nunavut, the journalist said “more nurses need to be hired in Nunavut.” That’s obviously false. Maybe nurses do need to be hired. Professionals need jobs. But that’s not […]
I’m a writer, a speaker, and an editor. Some consider the combination to be some super being but, in reality, I am just a regular man. In other words, I write, I talk and I correct. I began life as a writer, the proverbial newbie, who felt he knew it all and had the best […]
Writing is less about putting words on a page or screen than it is about putting thoughts in order. Our job as writers, as professional communicators, is to clarify the world and ideas for our audience. That means illuminating—showing something that was hidden before—and simplifying—sorting out ideas, phenomena and events that are tangled and difficult […]
There are some errors that drive me crazy, not because they’re so terrible — anything can be corrected — but because they appear so frequently, and they’re really so simple that it’s hard to imagine how people make them. “Lightening” for “lightning.” People who should know better make this mistake all the time. Even some […]
You can’t persuade an audience with unproven ideas, nor can you fire one up without appealing to their values. Read this opening to a seminar on secure information technology practices and then answer this question: do you care? “Why is security important to us? Because the effectiveness of our programs, activities and services depends on […]
The next few posts on this blog are going to focus on something that I like to tell myself I know something about: how to write. Since audiences seem to like step-by-step guides, I’ll start with the two basic rules of writing. Know what you want to say. Be able to sum up your main […]
Don’t you just hate it when you see a typo in work you’ve just published, posted on a website or sent to a client? Every writer needs to learn how to proofread. As a professional editor for over 30 years, I have a few favourite techniques for effective proofreading. Here are some, plus a few […]