My top 10 in how to use capital letters
There’s nothing worse than being tripped up by capital letters. This means having to wade through a long piece of text crippled by incorrectly used capital letters, and not knowing…
Content is king
See the scissors of the sub-editor
Where cash was once king, no-one wants to transact with hard currency, banks charge a fortune for handling the dirty lucre and it’s certainly not safe to be walking around…
Time will get you there
Debug your grammar gremlin
In my job, as sub-editor at a community newspaper, I had to reprimand a reporter for shoddy work. His report was submitted for subbing with several repeated paragraphs. When I…
Imagine money on the laundry line
A new take on money laundering
Last week while editing an academic text, my hawkish eyes fell upon the phrase money laundry. The esteemed professor had made a typographical error. I smiled quietly to myself as…
Smoking gun as only evidence of crime
Is there a smoking gun in the Zondo Commission? idiom origin
While the Zondo Commission takes a deep dive into state capture, many South Africans may hope it finds the "smoking gun". And if you are South African you will know…
Black swan as a metaphor for unprecedented events
Black swan, a label for COVID-19
In much of my research for clients in the past couple of months I have often seen the term black swan. As I know swans to be white in most…
Veracity and voracity: use these words correctly
In the spell of untruths around COVID-19, today, we are going to have some fun exploring the difference between veracity and voracity. These words if not heard correctly can be…
Sub-editor multi-tasking
Say it simply with said. Correct attribution in writing
In my work as a sub-editor, the only word allowed for an attribution is 'said'. No, 'revealed', no 'pointed out', no 'suggested', no 'argued' - just plain 'said'. As I…
Pivot on your toes
Pic by David Hoffman -unsplash
How sticking to your knitting will get you stuck: idiom usage
There was not enough wool to buy for all the crochet hours I would need to fill during the slumpy ‘non-work’ hours of lockdown. For one thing, I only bought…
pic by Thomas Morse
How years and ears distort the English language: origin of idioms
Shakespeare was the theme of our Toastmasters meeting last week. We learnt about how much The Bard contributed to the English language – from general words and phrases to idiomatic…
