In part 1 I considered why a house style is necessary for a business – for reasons of consistency, brand identity, and economy. Here I will cover a few areas that should be considered based on UK English usage Writing a house style • Abbreviations, acronyms, and contractions: A common style for abbreviations is capital … Continue reading House style – Part 2
Tag: tips for writers
Why you need a “house” style By “house” style I mean a writing or editorial style that a company or organization will aim to apply to all the documents and communications it produces. The same can perhaps apply to an individual author who is writing a series of books, guides, or articles. The main reasons … Continue reading Developing a house style
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In his 2017 book Camino Island by John Grisham – an undisputed master of crime and legal thrillers – the bookshop-owner Bruce Cable gave the following tips for writing fiction. The character said that he had read over 4000 books and here are Bruce’s pearls of wisdom for successful writing. Tip 1: Avoid prologues where … Continue reading Tips for writing fiction from a master thriller writer
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There are many who consider the colon and semi-colon to be identical punctuation stop marks and use both without discrimination, while others have a strong preference for one mark and have little use for the other. Here I am going to concentrate solely on the use of colons. The colon is described in the New … Continue reading Tips for writers: Knowing when to use colons
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Roman (that is upright type) is the standard text typeface, but for various reasons italic type (that is slanted to the right) is adopted. This is often to indicate some form of departure from normal text for the reader to interpret the word or words in a certain way.
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Biased language refers to words and phrases that can be considered hurtful, offensive, and prejudiced. Biased language includes expressions or terms that demean or exclude people because of age, ethnicity, marital status, race, religion, politics, sex, sexual orientation, social class, or certain physical or mental traits.
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Sexist language refers to words, terms, or usages that discriminate against or exclude either of the sexes, and that assume maleness, or even femaleness is the standard.
Despite many years of feminist campaigners and attempts to raise awareness of the use of sexist language, it still widely exists in modern life.
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They say there is a book in each one of us waiting to be written. If that is true it is probably easier for some people than others to turn that into a published book. The first decision to take is about what to write. Tip 1: Write about what you know Not everyone can … Continue reading Tips on how to avoid some pitfalls in writing
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At first glance by the layperson the terms collective nouns and mass nouns might appear to be the same, but there are differences. Collective nouns denote a group of individuals, such as crew or family, and the noun can be used with singular verbs or plural verbs. In Britain it is generally more usual for … Continue reading Tips for writers: Collective nouns and mass nouns
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You might wonder what the difference is between hyphens (-) and dashes/rules (*– en, — em dash/rule) that are to be seen in publications. Well, they have distinct functions in punctuation. The main ones are covered below. Hyphens These are used to join two words together (e.g. ‘mother-in-law’, ‘ill-natured child’), called a hard hyphen to … Continue reading Tips for writers: Knowing how to use hyphens and dashes
