Editor
This cartoon was inspired by a Twitter conversation with Jonathon Owen. Propose your own hair-splitting usage distinctions using this blank and post them to social media! For example, here’s one of Jonathon’s. Continue reading “Conspiracy”
Category: Editors
Proofreader’s bane
An Editorial Cartoon is available from your favourite online book retailer. One dollar from each copy sold goes to the Indigenous Editors Association.
Absorbed
Click through to enlarge!
An Editorial Cartoon is available from your favourite online book retailer. One dollar from each copy sold goes to the Indigenous Editors Association.
ABCs
One dollar from each copy of An Editorial Cartoon sold goes to the Indigenous Editors Association. Get yours today!
On the clock
(An Editorial Cartoon—a print book of the first ten years of these comics about editing and publishing—is available from online book retailers everywhere. One dollar from each copy sold goes to the Indigenous Editors Association. Massive thanks to everyone who’s bought a copy so far!)
Benefit of the doubt
Ruh-roh
Onscreen edit
Blues
I keep trying to remind myself that this is what bluelines are for. Or, as trusted colleague Jennifer Glossop has wisely said, “If it doesn’t make it into print, it doesn’t count.”
Bad breath
Frances Peck said it best in Peck’s English Pointers:
A sentence should contain no unnecessary commas for the same reason that a symphony should have no unnecessary pauses. True, commas add rhythm, and more importantly clarity, to our writing. But, if we use too many, of them, our writing becomes difficult, for people, to read, and our ideas end up fragmented, instead of connected.
For years participants in my grammar and writing workshops have magnanimously imparted their golden rule for commas: use a comma whenever you would take a breath. And for years I have regretfully but pointedly burst their bubble. That simple rule, which so many have clung to since their tender years, works occasionally (even often, if you’re a speechwriter or playwright), but it also gives rise to the superfluous commas that pollute our prose, bobbing up disconcertingly like plastic bottles in the ocean.