If you run a business, you probably know that customers appreciate clear communication. They want to be able to find important information quickly – for example, about products and services, how to find you or how to return an item…
If you run a business, you probably know that customers appreciate clear communication. They want to be able to find important information quickly – for example, about products and services, how to find you or how to return an item…
As the romance of Valentine’s Day fades into the past and I attempt to retrieve the last remaining crumbs of chocolate from my box of Thornton’s, I realise it’s very nearly time to renew my vows to the Society for…
In a recent conversation with an academic author, she told me that she’d like to write more concisely. I think she’s already good at this: she keeps her paragraphs and sentences to a manageable length and chooses her words carefully.…
If you’re studying for a doctoral qualification, you might be planning to have your thesis professionally proofread before you submit it to the examiners. Proofreading is the final stage of the work, when you want to iron out any spelling,…
As the holiday season approaches, many of us are looking forward to some time away from our desks. It’s also a time when we have to rush to meet those end-of-year deadlines, so in the run-up to the holidays it…
When writing my Spotlight entry for the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP) website, one of the questions I was asked was ‘What advice do you have for people starting out on an editorial career?’ Meeting new and established editors…
If you’re writing a long document that contains lots of tables, figures or illustrations (for example, a company report or a PhD thesis), using Word’s ‘Insert Caption’ tool helps you format, number and list them more efficiently. In this post,…
I have a confession to make: with a colleague, I proofread secondary-school reports. Not OFSTED reports – the ones that schools send home to students and their parents. I say ‘confession’ because when I mention this to friends and family,…
If you’re writing a PhD thesis, your reference list could be longer than an entire journal article. Taming that monster can be tedious, but it’s worth taking the time to get it right. A reference list that looks cared for…
Last Wednesday was National Fitness Day in the UK. Keeping fit’s a doddle if you work from home, isn’t it? You start the day with yoga. Go swimming at lunchtime. On sunny days you put down your pen (or keyboard)…