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Writing and Grammar Tips (beta)


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An editor’s tip for effectively editing your own work

We all want to present our best work whenever we present that work to an audience, not matter what that work is. If it is the written word, we want it to be free from errors, e.g., grammatical errors, misspellings, and typographical errors. Quite honestly, no one is a good editor of their own writing. When we read our own writing, everyone has a tendency to read over the small errors that are present in the writing. According to “What’s Up with That: Why it’s so Hard to Catch Your own Errors” by Nick Stockton in Science from 8/12/14, it is easier for us to miss the information errors since we already know the meaning that we expect to be present in the text; i.e., the two versions (i.e., the version in your head versus the one on the paper) are competing. Therefore, the best editor of your work is another person. They will be able to look at your work with a fresh and more critical eye.

However, if you cannot have another person edit your work for some reason, the next best plan is to read your own work aloud. This forces you to slow down and process the text differently than you do when you read the work silently. You will catch typos and misspellings more easily. You will also have a tendency to trip over sentences that are not written smoothly. This activity will help you identify areas that need attention.

Of course, our editors at EditMyEnglish are always waiting to help you edit your text so that you can present a prefected, polished document. Visit our site to start a new project today!

An Unclear Antecedant – What is it and How to Avoid it

Have you ever written an essay and received the feedback that you have an unclear antecedant and wondered what this even meant? Honestly, it isn’t an unusually difficult issue, and once we define the term and the problem, you will be able to spot them and fix them with ease.  An antecedant is a noun (a word that is a person, place, or thing) that gives meaning to a pronoun (e.g., he, him, she, her, it, they, or them) used within that same sentence or a nearby sentence.  The problem with an unclear antecedant is when a pronoun is not clearly linked to a noun to give that pronoun meaning.  This creates ambiguity in your writing.  For example, the sign in the following picture is a funny example of an unclear antecedant:

Screen Shot 2018-10-06 at 2.54.37 PM

Does “it” refer to “DOG” or “POO?”  This isn’t very clear, is it?  To clarify, perhaps it would be best to avoid the pronoun altogether (i.e., “If your DOG does a POO, Please put the POO in a litter bin.”).

Happy Writing!

Words to use in Place of “Very”

Good writing uses a variety of words. “Very” is often considered weak. Make your writing more interesting by avoiding the use of “very” and choosing more interesting vocabulary for your text. Use this guide as a start.

Very