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about editing and those confusing proofreader’s marks

ASIDE FROM MY OWN WORK, I have edited sev­eral books and many ar­ti­cles for others. I have no formal training in, merely study about editing. I never used the field’s ac­cepted nomen­cla­ture or proof-reading sym­bols. I just used my Strunk & White and every­thing worked out hunky-dory for those writers! [Read more] “about editing and those confusing proofreader’s marks”

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at least hillary knows the difference between “alternative” and “alternate”

LAST NIGHT’S SLUGFEST con­sisted of ninety min­utes of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton calling each other names (“liar” popped up more than once) and de­claring each other un­trust­worthy and unfit for of­fice. Policy dif­fer­ences and other mat­ters that should con­cern these two can­di­dates were set aside so that each could im­pugn the basic char­acter of the other! [Read more] “at least hillary knows the difference between “alternative” and “alternate””

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some (piss) poor writing about hillary’s “role” in benghazi

THE LAST WORD ANYONE would use to de­scribe me is “conservative”—at least not re­garding most is­sues re­lated to pol­i­tics. But there’s more to life than pol­i­tics: I re­main old-fashioned on the issue of pre­scrip­tive versus de­scrip­tive dic­tio­naries (strongly be­lieving in the former) and the misuse of the des­ig­nated hitter in major league base­ball (not at all what you think). [Read more] “some (piss) poor writing about hillary’s “role” in benghazi”

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are there supposed to be spaces between the dots in an ellipsis?

EVERY READER has seen those three dots in the midst of a sen­tence that tells them some­thing is hap­pening. These dots are called an ‘el­lipsis’ and are as­so­ci­ated with missing text, often quoted from an­other source. The word is from the Greek ‘elleipsis’ and means falling short—or for writers and grammarians—it means omission. [Read more] “are there supposed to be spaces between the dots in an ellipsis?”

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Why I Capitalize Every Word In Every Title

I CAP­I­TALIZE EVERY WORD in every title that I write in the text sec­tions of my books and es­says. That in­cludes cap­i­tal­izing the def­i­nite and in­def­i­nite ar­ti­cles and those perky prepo­si­tions! I al­ways have and no doubt I al­ways will. I do this for sev­eral rea­sons, which I share here in a ges­ture of bon­homie. [Read more] “Why I Capitalize Every Word In Every Title”

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far out! I’m another blog’s blog of the month!

LAST YEAR, I pub­lished an ar­ticle ti­tled “on william strunk and el­e­ments of style (and con­cise vig­orous writing)” here on Neal Umphred Dot Com. It’s as boring as the title makes it sound—you’d have to give a damn about the most im­por­tant figure and the most im­por­tant book in the his­tory of Amer­ican writing on the inses and outses of writing readably! [Read more] “far out! I’m another blog’s blog of the month!”

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can you be “electrified” by a slam dunk victory?

I PUT DOWN MY MUG OF COFFEE and reached into my desk drawer and dex­ter­ously pulled out my minia­ture samurai-sword letter-opener with the dropbear-tooth handle. After staring into space for a few sec­onds and mum­bling, “That’s not a knife—this is a knife,” I took a few swipes in front of me with the foot-long blade, voicing the ap­pro­priate martial-arts-movie swooshing-sounds as it cut the air. [Read more] “can you be “electrified” by a slam dunk victory?”

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the hyphen/forward-slash conundrum resolved

MY PRE­VIOUS AR­TICLE ON DASHES was ti­tled “On Those Pesky Dashes As Punc­tu­a­tion Marks” and ad­dressed the em-dash (—), the en-dash (–), and the hy­phen (-). It should have in­cluded some sug­ges­tions on the proper use of the for­ward leaning slash (/). After all, graph­i­cally the forward-slash, or vir­gule, is just an up­right, slanted dash! [Read more] “the hyphen/forward-slash conundrum resolved”

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on those pesky dashes as punctuation marks

USE OF THE DASH FOR PUNC­TU­A­TION is a lost art in con­tem­po­rary Amer­ican Eng­lish (AmE) and British Eng­lish (BrE) for many writers and ap­par­ently many type­set­ters. It’s a shame, as a well-placed dash or ten can ease the flow of reading and there­fore lead to in­creased un­der­standing and plea­sure. [Read more] “on those pesky dashes as punctuation marks”