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...
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 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...
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...
'Femininity' relates to characteristics that are socially constructed, things people have decided about what it means to be feminine, such as meekness or the colour pink. 'Femaleness' is biological. Female refers to sex assigned at birth. In our work as editors,...
I have written this brief piece in response to an enquiry from a respected language practitioner colleague who was asking which of the meanings of ‘skryfwyse’ the English word ‘style’ best conveys, if any at all. My starting point was Bosman, Van der Merwe and...
What is the active voice? In the active voice, the subject performs the action. Sentences are active in voice when the person or thing performing the action comes before the verb. The message is clear about who is responsible for the action; the reader knows who is...
Why copy editors mull over sentence structure and composition Subject, verb, object (subject + predicate) – may seem like an obvious order for many people, but recognising how words are strung together and in what order they should be placed adds depth and quality to...
We asked PEG members with a particular interest in Plain Language – and a long commitment as PEG members – their thoughts on Plain Language. This blog post is a collaborative effort of several PEG members: it takes us back and brings us forward as we continue to...
It’s the bravery – the courageous stepping into the unknown – that now delights me. There was a time when pedantry could have been my middle name. When misplaced apostrophes, caps strewn among non-proper-noun words with abandon, misspelling, and incorrect use of words...
In part 1 and part 2 of this post, I discussed some of the problems of lack of clarity and of verbosity that are common in academic writing and gave two examples of how typical constructions can be greatly improved in clarity and simplicity by applying Plain Language...
In part 1 of this post, I discussed some of the problems of the lack of clarity and of verbosity that are common in academic writing. What follows are some examples of typical constructions that can be greatly improved in clarity and simplified by applying Plain...
(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 article appeared in De Morgen newspaper on Saturday, 10 August 2019. It was translated from the Dutch by John Linnegar for the May 2020 issue of PEGboard. Gender-neutral language makes people think differently about the sexes, it would appear from...
If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. - Nelson Mandela Happy International Mother Language Day! We use language every day to communicate with each other, but our mother...
