Writing

Hyphens in writing are a useful punctuation tool, but they can sometimes confuse new writers. The key is understanding when they are needed and when they are not. Most of the confusion comes from compound adjectives, where you need to decide whether a hyphen is required to avoid ambiguity. Once you understand a few simple…

The origin of the idiom to vent your spleen dates back to Hippocrates in 400 BC. The belief endured until the nineteenth century that four bodily fluids controlled physical and mental qualities. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile were called humours. The word humour, or humor in US spelling, derives from Latin, meaning liquid…

The best writing apps for iPad are often the ones you already have installed, or free apps that help you sync with your laptop or desktop. For most writers and authors, you’re not going to replace your computer with your iPad. However, it’s a very handy backup solution when you’re traveling, on vacation, or even…

You can find so many writing rules that it can become a little confusing. I could probably list a hundred or more. But, as with all things, it’s always best to keep things as simple as possible. You can develop a routine if you have a short set of guidelines to remember and implement for…

With every sentence you write, you need to choose the correct verb. You can choose between a strong or weak verb or an active or static verb. Often it depends on collocation and an expectation of which verb will suit your sentence the best. As with all aspects of writing, you are the decision-maker. Can you…

New writers can easily believe the many myths about writing and writers they might read online. However, some of them are offering terrible writing advice. Others may be untrue or are at least stretching the truth. If you are a new writer, some of the advice you read can affect your confidence. Writing and publishing…

Every writer needs to know how to rewrite a sentence. It’s always part of editing to add variety to your writing or make certain elements more precise or powerful. It’s not quite the same as paraphrasing because that can be when you take words from another source and turn them into your own words. Rewriting…

Embedded questions, sometimes called indirect questions, are easy to use when you want to add more variety to your writing. We use them to change a direct question into a statement form. Indirect questions, which are also called polite questions, are one form of embedded questions. But you can use other forms to convert a…

Your choice of software for book editing will make all the difference to the final quality of your manuscript. Editing tools are indispensable for all authors, no matter how experienced. Writing a book is the easy part. But after you finish writing your first draft, you will need all the help you can get to…

One of the basic rules every writer should follow is to reference acronyms in writing. It applies to any form of writing. But in particular to articles, technical writing, and journalism. Whenever you use an acronym, you should reference it in full in the first instance to avoid confusing a reader. In the image above,…