Question: When is it appropriate to drop the word 'that'? I am editing a book and the author dispenses with the use of the word 'that'. When is it appropriate to do so? I accessed the guide from Walden University but would appreciate your thoughts on this...
Competence refers to a basic or minimal ability to do something. For example, in my performance contract, in addition to KPAs, ten competences are measured. This is a professional competence. Competency is the ability to understand problems and make decisions. This...
Question When there is a 'but' between two clauses, when do you need a comma and when not? Example (the context is narrative, not formal): 1. I walked down the same street, but this time I turned left. Here, the comma is needed because it is a coordinating...
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 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...
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...
When I read Annamarie Mostert’s blog, I was keen to understand more about the CCC model (correspondence, consistency, correctness) and how I could use it in my work as a copy editor. After reading more in one of my resources (listed below and in Annamarie’s blog), I...
Have you also had sleepless nights about sentences such as these? What do you think of his deciding to go? What do you think of him deciding to go? I always wonder if I know enough about gerunds and how to edit them correctly. The Oxford Dictionary defines a gerund as...
When it comes to mechanical aspects of writing, few details seem to trip writers up as much as capitalization: when to use uppercase letters, and when to use lowercase letters. Specific job titles preceding a person’s name are capitalized, but descriptions are not....
Then: 2007 We found this in an edition of Pegboard from as far back as 2007. These were deliberations of editors about prepositions at the end of sentences: Do your hackles rise when you spot a preposition at the end of a sentence? What does this little rhyme by...
The useful information below comes from a [PEGforum] et al. thread started on 2023-07-27, and a [PEGforum] Use of italics for Latin abbreviations thread that started on 2023-07-28. Question Please tell me if ‟et al.” should be italicised in English. Answer 1 Here is...
PEG member, Corné Janse van Rensburg, and the New Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors prefer one word. The online Oxford Dictionary gives it as one word but allows two words as an alternative. And yet the Oxford Concise Colour Medical Dictionary (2010) and the...
Collective nouns and the nouns they describe can be either singular or plural. Plural collectives describing singular nouns The words in bold italic font below are a curiously troublesome type of collective noun and usually, when they are plural, the nouns that follow...
Singular subjects must have singular verbs, and plural subjects must have plural verbs. A singular subject + of + a plural object. What misleads many an author and some editors is those constructions where the true subject of a sentence is singular but it is followed...
To me, part of the beauty of a comma is that it offers a rest, like one in music: a break that gives the whole piece of music greater shape, deeper harmony. It allows us to catch our breath (Pico Iyer). This post gives the comma its due regard and highlights its...
An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel. Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor. At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack. A...
Every name is called a NOUN, like field and fountain, street and town. In place of noun the PRONOUN stands like he and she can clap their hands. The ADJECTIVE describes a thing, like magic wand and bridal ring. The VERB means action, so something done, to read, to...
(Note: The first part of this article introduced helpful resources for various dictionaries and general copy-editing.) A book can contain many elements besides solid blocks of type. ... It is the editor's job to make all these elements work together to present the...
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else’s draft. HG Wells A passion it may well be, but altering ‘someone else’s draft’ also requires more than a mote of know-how. Now, that know-how does not necessarily all have to be crammed inside our...
This is an extract taken from The PEG guide to grammar and punctuation (2018) by Myf Steynberg. Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don't you find? - Lemony Snicket 'Grammar' is the term used to cover the rules or conventions of English usage that help us to...