Get ready for National Punctuation Day!
If you are a word nerd and grammar geek, you probably notice signs in grocery stores that say apple’s instead of apples and cringe at misspellings and improper punctuation. So you may already know about and celebrate National Punctuation Day, which this year is...
Hello from Royal Roads, week 2
My second three-week residency at Royal Roads University is two-thirds done, closing last night with a class party that was all kinds of fun. Week one ended with tea at the historic Empress Hotel overlooking Victoria harbour; the photo shows me feeling a bit like...
Blogging slowdown in progress
Remember the book, Where’s Waldo? That’s what my online presence has turned into these days. Where’s Sue? I’ve been quiet on this blog, Twitter and LinkedIn for weeks because I’m gearing up for the second year of the Professional...Proofreaders still MIA
Is it just me, or are errors in the printed word slipping through more than ever? I’m not talking about abbreviations in Twitter or texting, I mean words that sort of sound like they make sense, but are slightly to a long way off the mark. Here are some of the...
Controlled burn of my brain
Today presented itself to me as gloriously unstructured, pretty much the first such day since I embarked on my Royal Roads adventure last July. The reason: Year One is done. Yesterday, I submitted the final paper in the final class of the first year. I am torn between...
IABC11 highlights
The badge you see here is the type of identifier that marks IABC World Conference-goers, making it easy to strike up a conversation with people you don’t know. As I mentioned in my last post, that’s one of the benefits of the conference. Here are some of...
IABC11 – yes, another excellent adventure
“Communicatrix” Colleen Wainwright had a great line in her June newsletter that sums up the value of the 2011 IABC World Conference I just attended in San Diego: “We’re social beings, and to truly learn, grow and stay inspired, we need to get...
Five! Is too many!
Please tell my client that five exclamation points (or exclamation marks, if you prefer) in six sentences is too many. Last week I edited an annual report written by a non-profit group. Knowing the group wanted “donor-centric” copy, I deliberately left...