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...
This article appeared under the heading To hyphenate or not to hyphenate: that is the (thorny) question in PEGboard July 2018. Judging by the queries raised on the PEG chat group, the humble hyphen seems to have a lot of explaining to do! In this post, I focus on its...
Ever wonder how to use colons and semicolons? In this edition of PEGblog, Lyn Aecer attempts to win over some editors to the use of these marks while they improve texts. This article appeared under the heading Colons and semicolons: More honoured in the breach than...