As a keen-eyed reader, you have no doubt noticed that those little horizontal lines between words and numbers come in varying lengths. As a ke...

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

Editing using Microsoft Word’s Track Changes function is a fairly standard practice today, and it’s easy to see why—it’s neater, faster, and easier fo...

Could your academic writing use a good de-cluttering?   While doing structural editing for a client—especially with graduate students&...

Have you ever sat down to write a business article for a journal or a magazine and wondered what the editorial style of the publication was? Perhaps t...

For most editors today, the chance to work some editorial magic on a hard-copy manuscript is not one that comes by very often. For those who might not...

The Queen of the Night Alexander Chee Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I was given this novel by someone who thought that since I had a background in...

The Question of Mitbringsel Part of the preparation for my latest trip to Germany involved shopping for Canadian Mitbringsel (small presents): for m...

Even the most sports-illiterate word nerds (I include myself in this category) will have been paying some attention to this month's Olympic Games &mda...

In my most recent Kobo shopping spree, I was on the hunt for some great titles to carry me through the summer. I often find that I read certain genres...

Good business writing is clear and succinct. There are no unwanted words. The meaning is delivered with precision. The right tone, correct usage, and ...

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...

Along with classical orchestral music, opera has always had a presence on movie soundtracks (having spent three decades as a professional opera singer...

Since having my first baby earlier this year, my book-reading time has taken a serious hit. In fact, most of my reading for the past four months has c...

Double quotations vs. single quotations --  figuring out how to properly use both of these types of punctuation can be confusing, especially depe...

Here at TEC, we generally view summer as prime reading time, what with all the vacations, long weekends at the cottage, and general relaxation. We've ...

What does an editor do?   We can be correctors, arbiters, hand-holders. We can correct spelling errors or rearrange whole chapters, fix d...

So you've decided to self-publish a book. That's great! Self-publishing a book can be quite the journey, and it can also be incredibly rewarding. Here...

  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 ...

  What does it mean when we say an author is "working" the manuscript? It means that we recognize that the author is making the time...

  How do you look at a city? What do you see when you walk down its alleys, across its streets, and through its neighbourhoods? When I look ...

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 ...