Imagine you’re a dentist, and someone comes into your office seeking help with a bothersome tooth. You establish that the tooth needs a crown—and, luc...

When most people think of “editing,” they probably think of things like fixing spelling, correcting grammar, and tightening up sentence structure. How...

After writing about mixed metaphors last month, it was brought to my attention that I had peppered that post with malaphors. And, although malaphors a...

This week, we're revisiting a blog from our archives, asking an important questions for editors everywhere, but especially business editors in particu...

You may have heard the terms “trope” and “cliché” before, but do you know what they are? Contrary to what many people think, these terms are not synon...

I’ve always been a fan of finding examples of humorous misapplications of grammar or usage guidelines in writing. One source of such grammatical humou...

Luckily for writers and editors, word games are enjoying a surge in popularity. Over the past few years, games like Wordle and Words with Friends have...

In 2015, family history website Ancestry.ca surveyed 1,000 people across Canada, finding that 36% of respondents had no idea why the country celebrate...

If you haven't looked at a calendar yet today, you might not know that today, March 15, is actually the Ides of March. I'm sure you've heard of it bef...

As a human being, language is one of the most influential tools that you have. As with everything in life, language evolves and you need to ensure tha...

There’s never a bad time to refresh your writing skills, and now is as good a time as ever (especially if you’re finding yourself with some extra ...

As the world grows dark and cold in the Northern Hemisphere, cultures across the globe would normally gather together to drive away the gloom. However...

Well, 2021 is coming to an end (where did the year go, exactly?), and as 2022 approaches, it’s hard not to look back on the past year and think about ...

Pretty much everyone uses punctuation marks in their day-to-day life, whether it’s in texts, emails, professional communications, business writing, le...

The ways that linguistic conventions change over time are sometimes obvious. New dialects and turns of phrase crop up, and many of them gradually chan...

The Editing Company is celebrating its 14th year of editorial excellence, and, to mark this milestone, I’m investigating the cultural, numerological, ...

We are pleased to repost this blog by former TEC editor Laura Cok. Laura is currently working as a communications specialist with Indigo Books and is ...

Editing is hard work, and sometimes it's nice to take a break from editing a particularly difficult piece of text and have a bit of fun. I've collecte...

Here at TEC, it’s our job to provide our clients with the best guidance and advice in the editing and flow of their documents. Recently, we had a clie...

Editorial work entails a variety of different jobs. These include substantive editing, line editing, and proofreading. Because the process of editoria...

Ryerson University’s Publishing Program is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year!    Founded in 1990, the Certificate in Publishing is the larg...

Canadian vs. American spelling variation isn't a topic we have talked about recently, but it is definitely a subject that continues to remain relevant...

Although there are some who would advocate for a world free of passive-voice constructions, an all-out ban on this wrongfully maligned verbal form wou...

Spring is here, and as the trees start to bud, and the snowdrops and crocuses start to poke their green tips out of the dirt, it’s hard not to think a...

Editorial work entails a variety of different jobs. These include substantive editing, line editing, and proofreading. Because the process of editoria...

As the world grows dark and cold in the Northern Hemisphere, cultures across the globe would normally gather together to drive away the gloom. However...

Inclusive writing is often confused with politically correct writing, but political correctness isn’t an author’s main goal when writing inclusively. ...

Emphatic writing allows writers the opportunity to drive home the importance of letters, words, phrases, sentences, and ideas. Aside from mechanical c...

Our blog series on confusables has remained popular over the years, so we thought it was time to post a new list. This one includes some explanations ...

October 2020 is drawing to a close, and pandemic-fatigued children and adults are turning to the warm embrace of holiday nostalgia to help ease their ...

Though I can agree with the adage that anyone can write, we seldom take the time to unpack how people come to the writing process. In my world of acad...

In this archived post from 2017, TEC Blogger Michael Bedford muses on how editors deal with an unending stream of technical and internet lingo, with n...

Writing in a business environment can often be tricky, but throw in the uncertain times of a global pandemic and a rapidly changing market? Things jus...

We use different tenses all the time: I am listening to music. I went to the store on Saturday. I will make broccoli tonight. I am waiting for the tel...

“Thirty days have November, April, June, and September. With 28 there is but one. All the rest have 31,” but not this year. This year, none of the mon...

Chances are good that you will have to do some writing at some point in your business career. And regardless of your field, your writing will have to ...

So, you’ve done your years of studying. You’ve written countless essays and papers and exams. You know enough about a specific subject that you could ...

On January 25, 2020, the Chinese lunar calendar will turn over once again. In preparation for this year’s Spring Festival, I did some research, and pr...

As the world grows dark and cold in the Northern Hemisphere, cultures across the globe gather to drive away the gloom. There are dozens of holidays ce...

Punctuation marks are the signposts of prose. They indicate what’s important and where to pause. They add rhythm to your sentences. They help your rea...

Chances are, you have had a lot of experience or contact with business writing: compiling expense or business reports, writing up contracts, and craft...

It has been considered a usual style to shorten words in order to save time or space for some time now. Some of us will remember acronyms and initiali...

For academics across disciplines, writing and publishing journal articles is an unavoidable part of professional life. Anyone who’s been or been close...

Over the years, TEC has grown, acquiring new editors and a new office. One of TEC’s greatest strengths is that its editors work together in the same r...

Though I can agree with the adage that anyone can write, we seldom take the time to unpack how people come to the writing process. In my world of acad...

Our blog series on confusables (a.k.a., easily mixed up words) has remained popular throughout the years, so we thought we’d revive it and take a look...

When I first considered this blog post, I had a brilliant idea. I’d compare it to Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up! I’d call it “Th...

On June 18, 2019, we attended Book Summit 2019 at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. It was a gorgeous day to be on the waterfront — breezy, warm, and not...

On June 7, a perfect, sunny, 20 degree day, I arrived in Halifax. I breathed in the sea air after many months of life in Toronto, headed straight to t...

A few years ago, I decided to celebrate my love of Regency and Victorian literature by getting a tattoo of the word “ardent,” paying homage to Pride a...

As an icebreaker activity in one of my publishing courses, a teacher asked us to give our names, what we liked to read for fun, and what our favourite...

In 2009, “unfriend” was the Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year, leading to teeth-gnashing of grammar purists across the world. How could th...

Inclusive writing is often confused with politically correct writing, but political correctness isn’t an author’s main goal when writing inclusively. ...

A while back, we at TEC were chatting over lunch about Word On The Street, and I mentioned that I had once manned a booth at the event. The reaction w...

  It's pretty simple, right? A singular subject takes a singular verb, and a plural subject takes a plural verb. The dog is barking. The dogs ar...

Language and the way we use it is undeniably fluid. One doesn't have to look far to find idioms and words that have changed their wording and subseque...

    The political world gets progressively denser every day, especially the world of US politics. And, though Canadians often pretend at b...

    I'm set to play Jack Manningham in The Tipling Stage Company's production of Gaslight. And because the play, Patrick Hamilton's psycho...

        What do the words Y2K, plutoed, tweet, e-, they, and bailout have in common?   Simple. They ha...

  The past few years in Toronto have been very eventful for me: I've defended my PhD thesis, got married, started my freelance editing career, a...

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of introducing my husband and my 7-month-old son to the lovely island of Cape Breton, where my parents grew up....

Halloween fast approaches, and you may have noticed pumpkins and scarecrows appearing on your neighbours’ stoops, and ravaged racks of cost...

Hello, TEC blog readers! It's been a glorious summer so far, and we hope you have had ample time to enjoy the weather. This week, we are re-posting Le...

  Still puzzled by the different Canadian vs. American spellings? Drawing on the three blogs Barbara compiled (A to G, H to P, and Q to Z), we h...

  Q: How many editors does it take to split an infinitive? A: Just one, but he has to really be persuaded. If, as Dr. Johnson said, patriotism...

Stop right there. Did you read "queue to zee"? If you did, you're using American pronunciation. Up here in the land of butter tarts and ...

The "They" Debate The use of "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun has been the subject of much debate in the publishing wo...

  Every city has its own peculiarities of spelling and pronunciation. Some things you just have to know – such as the fact that the first ...

Variety Is the Spice of Life It's hard to believe that a whole month has gone by since we posted the first part of our Canadian and American spelling...

It's April Fool's Day, and in lieu of pulling pranks, we've got humour of a more literary nature in mind. With April being National Poetry Month ...

  A 2012 article by Bruce McCall in Vanity Fair attempted to unravel the secret of Canadian humour (or "humor" as the magazine spelled...

  Vive la Différence! We all know that there's a difference between Canadian and American spelling,* and many of us have a basic grasp o...

On September 28, musician, academic, and activist Wab Kinew addressed a full house at the Toronto Reference Library’s Bluma Appel Salon. The e...

  Since the term political correctness entered mainstream usage in the 1990s, it's been richly scorned and lampooned. Maybe this is because to s...

  Editor Barbara: She's Been There!   So you've been in Canada for a while now, and you've gone from understanding very little English to ...

  As a freelance editor working for clients from all over the world (and currently based here in Portland, Oregon), I have to be aware of the...

Don't get me wrong—I appreciate that the English language is constantly changing and evolving. And I know that my job as an editor requires...

Ahhh, the holidays. I don’t know about you, but I always love opening up the mailbox during the holiday season—there’s almost alwa...

Earlier this year, University of Toronto Press’ Journal of Scholarly Publishing featured a book review of Michael Billig’s Learn to Write ...

Grammar quiz: When is it appropriate to use “whom”? Answer: You would use "whom" when you refer to the object of a sentence. ...

Lately there has been a fair bit of news coverage dedicated to Canadian English as a language—what it is, why it’s important, and how it...

Why do Canadians persist in spelling certain words the way we do? Is it a Canadian quirk that we keep all of our British “-our”endings b...

There’s no question that, for better or worse, texting has brought about a whole new kind of written communication. Certainly, the way we spea...

As editors, we use style guides and resources for particular projects to ensure that we follow consistent guidelines. Every now and then acquaintanc...

 I’d like to take a look at two pairs of words that are increasingly, incorrectly interchanged. No, I’m not talking about your/you&...

Mid-October is that wonderful time of year when the air takes on a fresh new chill, the leaves turn their rich autumn colours … and rubber ba...

A Road Trip   Last month, my husband and I went on a road trip in California. It was a welcome relief from a crazy winter of study. We sh...

  I have a good friend who's a copy editor, just like me — except that she does it about 700 kilometres southeast of here. Or, in her es...

The Chicago Manual of Style and I disagree on something.   This almost never happens. I look at Chicago the way some people look at the Bibl...

Earlier this month, I said a temporary farewell to the TEC office and headed across the ocean. One of the stops on my two-week European journey was so...