I remember the first time I received cruel feedback from a client. I’d been freelancing for a few months. Although I could see the client was belittling me because they were confused by the tracked changes, their brutal words hit like a gut punch, leaving me unsure of...
At the last quarterly gathering of the PEG Gauteng group, the topic of discussion was ‘Conscious and inclusive language’. One member offered a novel solution to the problem of language that excludes – try to not be so sensitive. In response, I owned that I’m...
Question: I'm editing a document with many headings and sub-headings, only some of which have been taken up in the automatically created Table of Contents. How do I apply or remove the formatting that determines whether or not a heading is included in the automatic...
For around only SEK1 500 a year it is possible to subscribe to the artificial intelligence (AI) editing services that some reputable journal publishers offer nowadays. This seems like a brilliant way to save time and money on language editing services. But just how...
Reference list A reference list is a list of the books and other items referred to in a scholarly work, typically printed as an appendix. It can be in alphabetical or numerical order, and should give the author, title, date and source of the referenced items in enough...
Question Heléne van der Westhuizen asked: Are accurately, precisely and exactly interchangeable and are there context/nuance differences to be mindful of? Answers Oxford Dictionary Our Oxford dictionary defines the words by each other, which is not helpful in this...
Cripple, dumb, spaz, spastic, midget, crazy, invalid, handicapped, moron, idiot, retarded, deaf-mute, deaf and dumb, stupid, Mongol … these are only some hurtful terms that inconsiderate people use to refer to people with disabilities. Frequently used when...
To omit the label and number from a List of Tables or Figures in Microsoft Word, go to References > Table of Figures. The Tables and Figures dialog box pops up. Untick ‘Include label and number’ at bottom left in the dialog box, as shown below: Published on: Oct...
Sometimes you need to remove your name from Track Changes after you have already made corrections. Go to Review > Compare > Compare. Browse for the original document and the revised document. Select the name you want to ‘Label the changes with’ (eg Editor, as...
Paula is the colleague we got to know in the August 2014 issue of PEGboard as a writer of fiction as well as an editor. She now lives in Portugal, is an ATE and specialises in engineering. What life changes have affected your editing since August 2014? Changing jobs...
The word "sanction" has two seemingly opposite meanings, and it belongs to a category of English words called contronyms. A contronym is a word with two meanings that happen to be the opposite of each other. It is actually a word with a homonym (another word with the...
You can insert an emoji into emails and computer text by pressing the Windows key + a period (dot/full stop) and then selecting it from the popup panel. Published on: Oct 11, 2024 at 08:54 32 words
Nothing happens until something moves (Albert Einstein) Work slumps happen. But sometimes they go on a little longer than we’d like. This happened to me recently and I had to make something move. Armed with determination and the need to survive, I embarked on an...
I think the difference between redundancy and tautology is the following: Redundancy Redundancy is careless repetition, without any stylistic or rhetorical meaning, that can be seen as a thoughtless language error or stylistic fault. Think of the following: absolute...
I am not a digital native, I am not even a digital immigrant – I am an undocumented digital foreigner. I get daily reminders of this whenever I go onto the internet. A modern CV Let me explain. A while ago, Alexis Grewan suggested we form a PEG group to assess one...
Have you ever wondered what impression you make on potential clients when they first see anything about you, the editor? First impressions In Gauteng, a few of us were keen to find out a little more about making a good impression. We joined forces to brave the...
I still remember the first time it happened. I was standing in the foyer of the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, waiting for my friends to join me. They were driving together and running late, but one was keeping me updated. Then came the WhatsApp message: ‘We just...
Use a Unicode fraction generator tool Mike Leisegang very kindly shared this discovery with the PEGforum group as follows. I was challenged this morning to insert fractions into a thesis I am editing. The line looked like this, which was rather ugly: …radial symmetry...
The correct usage is always: (this) kind of vehicle BUT (those) kinds of vehicles (this) type of plant BUT (those) types of plants (this) sort of question BUT (those) sorts of questions Although the mixture of singular and plural, as in: those sort of terms "is quite...
I’m sure we’ve all done the brainteaser where the word ‘the’ is repeated in print but when it is read out loud, invariably only one ‘the’ is read. Wordsmiths, however, being astute and wise to the ways of words, tend to notice it and triumphantly read ‘the’ twice. It...