When to write numbers in words

Writing numbers can be confusing. Time and again, I comes across people who don’t know when they should write out a number (like four) or whether they should use figures (like 26). What doesn’t help is that the main style guides don’t agree.

Should seasons be capitalized?

With the first day of spring just behind us (at least those of living in the northern hemisphere), I noticed at the time several memes, corporate advertisements, and status updates mentioning spring and the vernal equinox. Many of them capitalized spring. The thing though is that seasons aren’t capitalized. They aren’t proper nouns and, outside of… Continue reading Should seasons be capitalized?

Why you should ditch Grammarly and hire a professional

Even though my bread and butter is copyediting, I have a side job at the local university as an academic writing tutor in the Writing Centre. I had a student come in with a paper today. There were quite a few spelling, grammatical, punctuation, and clarity issues. Because she had used Grammarly, which her instructor… Continue reading Why you should ditch Grammarly and hire a professional

Jesus is afraid of the mall, or why punctuation matters

Recently, an incident occurred at one of the local malls (the largest mall locally, in fact) that prompted an armed police presence. People were, of course, commenting on news stories that local media were publishing on their social media accounts. Take a look at the first comment below taken from a Facebook post: Here, the… Continue reading Jesus is afraid of the mall, or why punctuation matters