Erin Brenner's Blog, page 3

Clarifying the Suspensive Hyphen

The common reader may believe punctuation to be minutia compared to other components of a written work, but editors know better. Using punctuation correctly—or incorrectly—can affect the work’s overall tone and message. And one of the most questioned punctuation marks is the suspensive hyphen. Let’s dive into what it is and when to use it. (Spoiler alert: Major style guides, and yours truly, support using this hyphen!)

Dropping the Second Term

The question of a suspensive hyphen—that is, the use o...

Hyphenation Headaches: Navigating -ly Adverb Rules

Many Right Touch Editing clients use the term cost-effective in their marketing collateral, including the variation cost effectively, as in: We are cost effectively providing. 

A client once asked: “Should cost effectively be hyphenated? Cost-effective is hyphenated in Merriam-Webster’s, but I keep bumping into the rule about not hyphenating –ly adverbs in my grammar and style books.”

Compound adjectives like cost-effective are hyphenated, but compound adverbs with –ly adverbs generally are not. H...

A Dozen Ways to Advance Your Copyediting Career, Part 2

Last week, I shared several career paths copyeditors can take and helpful resources to get you started. Keep reading for more more ways to develop your skillset and expand your professional horizons in the publishing field.

I Love Words, But …

Just because you love words doesn’t mean you can’t love other things, too. I know many wonderful editors who are also gifted crafters that run successful craft businesses. You might be a great musician or a talented woodworker and build a second career base...

A Dozen Ways to Advance Your Copyediting Career, Part 1

Copyediting can be a fulfilling career, especially for people who love language and love to learn. The texts we edit can teach us about topics we know little or nothing about. We can find joy in the word puzzles that sentences present to us.

Sometimes, though, that’s not enough. We become bored with our routines and desire to do something different. Maybe we want the opportunity to earn more money or build more variety into our client lists. Situations change, too, both personally and professiona...

The Editor’s Approach to Marketing Copy

In this digital age, businesses of all kinds are vying for audience attention. Effective marketing copy is one way to connect with potential buyers, and editing this copy is an important skill for editors looking to expand their clientele. Here are some of the most important things to keep in mind when editing marketing copy. 

Like any other type of editing, you want to become familiar with the jargon—in this case both marketing jargon and related industry jargon. If I edit marketing copy for med...

One House, A Third Writing Process: A Video Essayist’s Approach

Recently on The Writing Resource, I shared two very different writing processes, mine and my husband’s, in the “One House, Two Writing Processes” series. A third member of the Brenner household, our son Sean, is also a writer and has developed his own writing process. I’ve invited him to write about it here. —EB

In the previous two parts of this series, my parents shared their contrasting approaches to writing—my mother’s methodical editor’s process and my father’s “bull in a writing shop” journa...

The Descriptivism–Prescriptivism War, Part 2: The Copyeditor’s Role

In language and editing, descriptivism and prescriptivism can affect how editors approach their work. But sometimes those terms can become a little muddled. 

In part 1, I shared an example of how we can misunderstand descriptivism and prescriptivism and offered more accurate definitions for each. In part 2, I’ll dive into the practical implications of these concepts, exploring how to balance these approaches in your editing practice. 

What Does This Have to Do with Copyediting? 

Critics of false de...

The Descriptivism–Prescriptivism War, Part 1: Battlelines

On September 6, 2016, Merriam-Webster tweeted the following: 

It’s fine to use mad to mean “angry”—even if doing so makes some people mad.

And boy did it make one person mad—er, angry! 

To this day Merriam-Webster’s Twitter account is full of information about words and how we use them. It posts a word of the day, giving the pronunciation and definition from their files. It identifies words that people are suddenly looking up more, usually because of a prominent use in media. And it discusses usage...

One House, Two Writing Processes, Part 2: From Outline to Final Draft

In part 1 of this series, I explored how two writers with different styles—me as a trained editor and my husband Bill as a trained journalist—approach the initial stages of writing. 

Today, we’ll dive into the second half of the writing process: outlining, drafting, and revising. As before, you’ll see that though our approaches differ, they lead to the same destination: engaging, well-crafted content.

4. Outlining: To Structure or Not to Structure

I’m a firm believer in outlines. Yes, they can be t...

One House, Two Writing Processes, Part 1: Getting Started

One of my favorite hobbies is taking yoga classes at a local studio. While every instructor at the studio is vinyasa-trained (vinyasa is one of many styles of yoga), they all approach their classes differently. Some make detailed plans of their classes in advance, while others prefer to ask their students what they need at the beginning of class and incorporate their requests into a flow. Some instructors choose to do a mix of both. 

These subjective differences in teaching yoga mirror subjective...